Client Situation
Our client is a leading strategic investment holding group for the food and retail sectors in the MENA region. With a heritage of 40+ years, the client has companies under two entities. It has a widespread presence in over 50 countries, operates almost 205 grocery stores, and mainly produces everyday household staples.
Cedar’s Approach
The client mandated Cedar with developing the strategic management process needed to successfully implement its vision and strategy to achieve both - its short-term and long-term business vision. The activities conducted by Cedar involved:
- Collection and validation of the client’s relevant internal data
- One-on-one interviews with relevant company management teams to articulate their interpretation of the vision, the financials, customer, internal process, and organizational objectives of the enterprise, their concerns vis-à-vis the strengths and weaknesses of the organization, etc
- Secondary research collection and validation
- Integration of the internal assessment, secondary research and one-on-one interview inputs to develop a summarized analysis of the objectives
- Finalization of measures to ensure clarity in terms of formula, the unit of measurement, frequency of measurement, source of data, key assumptions, availability of data, etc
- Balanced Scorecard development and final presentation
Outcome
The key outcomes of this program were as follows:
- Identification of crucial strategic initiatives and their measures from the financial perspective, such as:
- Shifting of the portfolio to high growth potential via complementary businesses
- Increase of turnover by expanding into new commodities and knowledge-based businesses
- Establishment of cost efficient leadership
- Identification of crucial strategic initiatives and their measures from the customer perspective, such as:
- Development of expertise in established market entry to become the preferred choice for external partners
- Provision of cost-effective access to centres of excellence to help all businesses
- Provision of strategic guidance and direction to business units, ensuring corporate alignment
- Identification of crucial strategic initiatives and their measures from the internal process perspective, such as:
- Generation of sufficient cash in order to meet expansion plans
- Market diversification into Asia and Africa through direct entry, acquisitions and joint ventures
- Creation of cost-efficiency through plug-in ready, central functions to enable swift assimilation of new businesses
- Identification of crucial strategic initiatives and their measures from the learning and growth perspective, such as:
- Cultivation of a truly globalized, motivated and empowered culture
- Development of critical capabilities such as M&A, marketing, raw materials trading, etc. to support long term strategies
- Application of management by objectives and performance management systems