SMCG for Management Consultants and Business Analysts

What is the aim of this course?

Consulting projects especially when it comes to consumer goods business are very demanding. The two most complicated areas are sales and marketing and supply chain. During consulting projects I have seen business analysts and management consultants struggling with understanding the business fast enough to deliver value to the customer. This course will give you the knowledge and insight into real life case studies that will make your life during a consulting project in a consumer goods business much easier.

This course will help you drastically improve your knowledge and skills in analyzing and improving Slow Moving Consumer Goods businesses (SMCG) such as furniture, smartphones, cars etc. It is designed for people who want to become management consultants, business analysts or have to run and optimize SMCG businesses on daily bases. In the course you will learn 4 things:

1. How to model SMCG business in Excel

2. How to improve sales and marketing in order to increase margin and profit

3. How to improve supply chain in order to increase margin and profit

4. How the move from selling a product to selling a service will impact the business

The course is based on my 15 years of experience as a consultant in top consulting companies and as a Board Member responsible for strategy, improvement and turn-arounds in biggest companies from Retail, FMCG, SMCG, B2B and services sector that I worked for. On many occasions I had to optimize also sales and marketing of the businesses I was responsible for. On the basis of what you will find in this course I have trained over 100 consultants, business analysts and managers who now are Sales and Marketing Directors, Operational Directors, COO, Investment Directors, Directors in Consulting Companies (McKinsey, PwC, BCG, KPMG, EY), Supply Chain Directors, Board Members etc. On top of that my courses on Udemy have already been taken by more than 42 000 students.

I teach through cases, so most of the lectures are case studies showing some business problems solved in Excel. There will be also overview of main challenges in sales and marketing as well as supply chain typical for SMCG. To every lecture you will find attached (in additional resources) the Excels shown in the lecture so as a part of this course you will also get a library of ready-made analyses that can, with certain modification, be applied by you in your work.

Why I decided to create this course?

Consulting projects especially when it comes to consumer goods business are very demanding. The two most complicated areas are sales and marketing and supply chain. During consulting projects I have seen business analysts and management consultants struggling with understanding the business fast enough to deliver value to the customer. The course will give you the knowledge and insight into real life case studies that will make your life during a consulting project in a consumer goods business much easier. Thanks to this course, you will know what and how to do during a consulting project devoted in a SMCG company. I will show you also how to model SMCG business in Excel.

To sum it up, I believe that if you want to build or to find improvements in SMCG business you should master techniques related to analyzing and optimizing sales and marketing as well as supply chain. That is why, I highly recommend this course not only to consultants or business analyst that have to advice their customer but also to owners, founders of businesses as well as directors.

In what way will you benefit from this course?

The course is a practical, step by step guide loaded with tones of analyses, tricks, hints that will significantly improve the speed with which you find and analyze SMCG business. There is little theory – mainly examples, case studies with a lot of tips from my own experience as well as other notable examples worth mentioning. Our intention is that thanks to the course you will learn:

1. How to understand and improve sales and marketing in SMCG

2. How to understand and improve supply chain in SMCG

3. How to model SMCG business in Excel

4. How to model for relatively new things in SMCG like customer base and switching from selling a product to selling a service

You can also ask me any question either through the discussion field or by messaging me directly.

How the course is organized?

The course is divided currently in 4 sections and I will be adding new sections to address other important issues. Currently you will find the following sections:

• Introduction. We begin with little intro into the course. I will show you here what you can expect from this course and how it is organized

• Modeling SMCG business in Excel. In the second section I will show you how to model in Excel SMCG business. You will also get as a part of it Excel files to play with. I will use here 2 examples. We will model the SMCG in the traditional way (selling a product) and in alternative way (selling of services). We will here use the case study of smartphones and vacuum cleaners producers

• Sales and Marketing in SMCG. In this section I will show you examples of analyses of sales and marketing in SMCG business. This will give you a good idea on what to concentrate during a consulting project

• Examples of business analyses of Supply Chain in SMCG. In the 4th section I will show you examples of analyses of supply chain in SMCG business. This will give you a good idea on what to concentrate during a consulting project.

I will be adding new sections and lectures in the coming months

You will be able also to download many additional resources

• Excels with analyses shown in the course

• Presentation of slides show in the course

• Links to additional presentations and movies

• Links to books worth reading

At the end of my course, students will be able to…

• How to model consumer goods (SMCG) business in Excel

• Analyze sales and marketing in SMCG

• Increase profits by optimizing sales and marketing in consumer goods business

• Analyze supply chain in SMCG

• Improve supply chain in consumer goods business

• How to estimate the value of consumer base

• Model SMCG as a service business

Who should take this course? Who should not?

• Management Consultants

• Business Analysts

• Directors

• Startups founders

• Controllers

What will students need to know or do before starting this course?

• Basic or intermediate Excel

• Basic knowledge of economics or finance