Success Stories


Project Management

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Consumer Products

A global consumer goods manufacturer needed help with a project to develop a marketing strategy for a product coming off patent. The company wanted to ensure that they were well prepared to maintain market viability in the face of a competitive response to the product coming off patent. The marketing team in the local country where the patent was ending needed to coordinate their marketing activities with the global organization that managed the overall category strategy as well as developing and rapidly executing a timely plan.

HSC was contracted to lead the marketing project. We:

  • Assembled a cross-functional team, including the local and global marketing teams, representatives from sales and shopper marketing and marketing services contractors
  • Conducted a joint planning session to develop a common plan of action with timing
  • Defined and gained agreement to project roles and responsibilities
  • Developed and executed a communications plan for the project team and executive sponsor
  • Conducted regular meetings and dealt with issues to ensure the project stayed on track
  • Helped the local and global marketing teams to stay in sync and resolve issues where global and local priorities conflicted
  • Conducted a session to capture learnings from the project for use in future, similar projects

As a result of the project:

  • The project was completed on time and within budget
  • The global and local marketing teams were able to make a business case, gain the funding they needed for a proactive marketing program and execute the plan
  • Despite the product going off patent, as planned, the marketing team was able to maintain market share for the product
  • As a side benefit, the global and local marketing teams began to work together more effectively and set up an ongoing meeting to ensure they stayed in sync in the future
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Manufacturing

A manufacturing company decided to consolidate distributors in Canada. The company had 2 distributors there, but one was under-performing and they felt that going from 2 down to 1 would save costs as well as improve service and performance to their customers.

The company hired a project manager, now an HSC partner, to manage the consolidation project. The project manager did the following:

  • Began by developing a project charter and conducting a joint planning session with a cross-functional team from the manufacturer to develop a project plan with milestone dates, issues and risks, assumptions, roles and responsibilities and a communications plan
  • Led the team through the selection of the 1 distributor who would provide ongoing services
  • Conducted joint planning sessions with each of the distributors to refine the transition plan and clarify each of their roles and responsibilities
  • Conducted 3 weekly status meetings to keep all of the parties on target and in sync with each other
  • Maintained changes and communicated updates to the project plan
  • Maintained and updated a key issues schedule and managed issues to ensure the project continued to progress; called individual team members and conducted additional meetings to resolve issues as needed
  • Prepared a bi-weekly executive status report to keep the project sponsor and key stakeholders updated
  • Conducted a post-project completion meeting with all 3 parties to capture learnings
  • When the manufacturer’s project liaison left the company, worked directly with the executive sponsor to complete the project with minimal supervision

As a result:

  • The project completed successfully on time
  • The manufacturer was able to achieve the benefits they expected
  • The manufacturer was able to maintain a good relationship with both distributors, facilitating potential future projects together
  • All 3 organizations gained valuable learnings to apply to future projects
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