Discover how we helped a leading confectionary group unlock immediate performance gains and rise to the top of its retail channels.
After a series of acquisitions, a leading confectionery group set out to become number one in its market. However, growth was hampered by siloed operations, poor service levels and limited planning visibility. Oliver Wight’s assessment revealed deep structural and behavioural gaps, from biased forecasts to disconnected commercial and operational planning. By aligning leadership around key priorities, and implementing sales and operations execution, and Integrated Business Planning, we helped unlock immediate performance gains and lasting transformation. Within two years, the company had vastly improved a number of key metrics and rose to the top of its retail channels. Here’s how it happened.
Despite their aspirations, the leadership team quickly ran into familiar frustrations, facing significant internal and external challenges:
Finance leaders worried about missed targets and high working capital. Supply chain leaders felt stuck, juggling excess stock with low service levels. Sales & Marketing leaders lacked confidence in plans and visibility. Everyone was firefighting. Trust was fraying.
It was clear: they had scale, but not synergy. To grow, they needed integration – not just of systems, but of people, plans and purpose.
Having previously worked with Oliver Wight consultants across its acquisitions, the client turned to us to lead the next phase of change. Our engagement began with a comprehensive assessment using the Oliver Wight Enterprise Business Model framework.
We conducted qualitative and quantitative diagnostics across end-to-end functions, including demand planning, portfolio management, manufacturing, supply chain, marketing and finance. This assessment also included site visits and interviews across markets and business units to identify capability gaps, structural inefficiencies and performance shortfalls.
One of the first steps was aligning the executive team on what we term their ‘must-wins’. These critical strategic priorities became the foundation for our improvement roadmap. We also introduced the concept of ‘the point of commitment’, helping senior leaders recognise that achieving their goals would require behavioural and structural change.
This wasn’t just strategic clarity, it was emotional clarity. For many leaders, this was the first time they’d felt confident their peers were pulling in the same direction.
The diagnostic uncovered a range of pressing issues undermining performance. Marketing, in particular, was not contributing to the long-range demand plan, creating disconnects between promotional planning and production capacity. The business lacked a unified, forward-looking view of its operational and commercial plans, which was essential for achieving competitive advantage.
Issues included:
And many of these issues were personal and emotional as well as operational. Marketing leaders felt disempowered. Supply chain leads felt blamed for problems beyond their control. Finance was under pressure to explain variances that they couldn’t predict.
These problems were connected. And that meant the solutions had to be too.
With clarity on the challenges, the next phase focused on implementation. The change journey was structured into a series of sprints, designed to build momentum while enabling sustainable change.
We categorised the work into three streams:
By sequencing the work, we gave leaders a sense of momentum. The early wins were not only performance improvements but acted as morale boosters as well. Teams began to believe change was possible. And crucially, they saw it was happening with them, not to them.
Leaders felt less isolated. Planning became a shared responsibility, not a battleground.
To ensure knowledge transfer and internal capability building, we delivered a programme of workshops and coaching sessions:
These sessions rehumanised change. Teams didn’t feel trained, they felt included, equipped and encouraged. This shift in mindset was as important as the shift in process. While many stages of the process were delivered during the COVID-19 pandemic, the client achieved full rollout of the new planning processes.
Soon after the programme began, the business had achieved its ambition of becoming the number one confectioner in its target channels.
Key outcomes included:
This wasn’t just about being better. It was about being together. A business once marked by fragmentation was now united by shared goals, clearer plans and deeper trust.
This case study exemplifies how true change is personal as well as technical. Oliver Wight helped this business evolve from a fragmented group of legacy brands into a confident, agile and integrated market leader by connecting strategy with systems and systems with people.
By embedding Integrated Tactical Planning and Integrated Business Planning – underpinned by our Enterprise Business Model – we enabled our client to align people, processes and planning horizons around a shared vision. The result was not only operational excellence but strategic leadership in a competitive, mature market.
Their journey reflects what so many business leaders are striving for: not just better performance, but greater clarity, stronger alignment and a renewed sense of purpose.
When every part of the organisation – from planning to people to priorities – moves in unison, leadership isn’t just possible, it’s inevitable.
This is just one example of the lasting impact our approach delivers. Explore more client success stories in our case studies library.
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