Consumer Packaged Goods

Pursuing the right opportunity

CHALLENGE

A CPG company was investigating a possible acquisition of a manufacturer with multiple brands and locations in North America and Europe.

A key element of the project was to understand the company’s sales through healthcare practitioners. Example issues included:
What is the target’s competitive ranking within the sector?
How does one sell/market within the practitioner channel?
Will the various brands bring synergistic capabilities to clients?
Will some of the brands need to be divested? If so, will shared resources within the company make divestitures difficult?

solution

ENGINE used a phased approach to first establish baseline data and then to build the fuller description of market dynamics:

  • Phase 1: Review secondary literature to seek data directly (or indirectly) applicable to information objectives
  • Phase 2: Industry interviews with current/former employees of acquisition target, competitors, distributors, industry observers (e.g., authors of trade reports) and consultants regarding channel market drivers, purchasing processes, and target’s and competitors’ strengths and weaknesses

IMPACT

ENGINE found the acquisition had multiple benefits to the client.

The sector was growing at above-industry rates and thus represented an attractive adjacency for existing product lines. The acquisition target had several areas for potential improvement, but the company recognized the opportunities and was realizing growing margins through increasing operational efficiency.

In ENGINE’s opinion, the acquisition target was strongly positioned for continued growth. The client project team was excited by the research findings and agreed to present a recommendation of pursuing the opportunity to the executive board.