The Growth Dilemma
Strategic Revenue Growth Management
The Growth Dilemma
Good growth is profitable, sustainable, and by design. There is much more to good growth than the traditional pillars of Revenue Growth Management spanning pricing, promotions, assortment, and trade investment…
Achieving good growth requires competitive advantage, the ability to leverage that advantage through superior performance, and lastly to continually improve the organization while moving towards a preferred future reality.
Why is it so difficult?
Value generation, delivery, and collection is ultimately a function of people doing work through a process using technology, which generate data that flows through a measurement system to gain insight used to continually improve the organization. The degree to which people and resources perform better than competitors form the rough definition of superior performance. Competitive advantage not only includes products and services, but also internal processes, the ability to formulate good plans, machines, pricing, the ability to leverage data science and the like to outperform competitors in the market, and quite a bit more…
The ability to create and leverage competitive advantage and superior performance depends greatly on how the organization continually improves and change. Continuous learning and Change Management must therefore become ever present tactical processes if good growth is to be had.
Most organizations already plan how to conduct their business, some using Integrated Business Planning, the Demand Driven Adaptive Enterprise approach, or even just OKR’s and SWOT analysis. Although these approaches have touch points to Revenue Growth Management (RGM) and provide for it to be considered to some degree, RGMi has found that organizations have typically struggled to fully incorporate RGM principals into the planning endeavor, often falling prey to misaligned measurements, disjointed execution, clashes of authority, and planning software that enables finance and supply chain well, but less so when it comes to RGM. In the experience of RGMi, a common symptom of poorly performing RGM engagements is that they simply don’t integrate well with the rest of the business planning approach and philosophy. A merged approach between Revenue Growth Management and typical Business Planning approaches is needed…
What do we need to achieve good growth?
The growth dilemma is simply too big to deal with without breaking it into more bite-size pieces. Specific focus is required around formulating strategy, making good tactical plans, and getting things done in an integrated manner within existing planning approaches.
This cannot simply be achieved overnight. It’s a journey!
RGMi DNASM seamlessly merge Revenue Growth Management and typical Business Planning approaches to gear the organization for good growth! The RGMi JourneySM frames RGM as a cross-functional capability that materialize in five stages:
- DISCOVER the cross-functional nature of RGM
- DEVELOP the skills needed to do RGM well
- DELIVER the processes and techniques the business needs to succeed
- DRIVE the benefits RGM promise
- ACCELERATE the business forward towards even higher profitable growth in a sustainable manner
Each stage incrementally delivers value to consumers, shoppers, channel partners, manufacturers, and suppliers, through the RGMi DNA Process MapTM which focus on strategy formulation, precision-focused tactical planning, and targeted action through value buffers.
Strategic RGMSM drives toward the preferred future reality through
- enabling superior performance,
- building competitive advantage,
- continually improving the organization,
- in a holistic manner across the financial, demand, and capacity domains,
- all the while moving towards the strategic intent of good growth through value generation, delivery, and collection.
Precision RGMSM brings good growth drivers into tactical planning while
- leveraging competitive advantage,
- driving superior performance,
- continually improving the organization,
- being underpinned by Strategic RGMSM plans,
- seamlessly merging with (Integrated) Business Planning, and
- informing Action RGMSM
Action RGMSM drives good growth through informing value generation, delivery, and collection tasks by
- holistically driving superior performance in an integrated manner,
- managing the cost to sell, the cost to serve, and the cash-to-cash cycle,
- given the complexity in
- scale,
- the inter-connectedness of the business and the teams within it,
- the market, and
- day-to-day operational realities.
Where to from here?
Good growth is profitable, sustainable, and by design. To achieve it requires the organization to learn how to best gear for growth in a collaborative cross-functional manner, align internally, and formally bring RGM into the larger planning process in a structured manner.
The Revenue Growth Management Institute has developed RGMi DNASM to poise the organization for good growth, underpinned by continuous learning. The RGMi DNA Process MapSM seamlessly merge typical Business Planning approaches and RGM, and is encapsulated in the RGMi DNA JourneySM that incrementally yields value at a rate which the market can absorb, and the business can sustainably deliver.
