Digital
We bring together a range of sector and functional experts from across OC&C to support our clients in some of their highest priority business concerns when it comes to digital. This mix of expertise enables us to design bespoke, innovative solutions to our client's most pressing issues.
We can help you address a number of business-critical questions:
Looking to build the best plan to grow?
From start-up to scaled-up, growth strategy is one of our core capabilities. We work with digital businesses ranging from start-ups to multinational giants, often supporting them through the entirety of this journey.
Looking to acquire, divest, or IPO?
We are experts in mergers and acquisitions, supporting both Private Equity investors and corporates across all stages of the investment cycle – ranging from identifying and assessing potential investment targets, to seeking out minority or majority investors, to IPO. Our team has developed a set of proprietary tools to answer the most pertinent questions on buyers’ and sellers’ minds when it comes to digital businesses.
Looking to expand internationally?
Opportunity abounds for digital businesses – but international expansion brings with it its own set of challenges, with key questions around a number of themes such as go-to-market strategy, proposition design, and operating models. We help our clients answer these key strategic questions while ensuring pragmatic execution, and our ‘on the ground’ experience in a number of major global markets helps us to craft strategies that are genuinely bespoke.
Designing new propositions?
Whether a digital native business or an offline business finding its feet in the digital world, we help our clients understand what their target customer really wants and how to build propositions around them. We deploy industry-leading customer insights to really understand customer needs, build effective customer segmentations and design propositions and strategies around this.
Optimising your approach to sales and marketing?
We have extensive expertise in all aspects of sales and marketing – marketing analytics, salesforce effectiveness, pricing, and many more.
Rethinking customer journeys?
We work with digital businesses to understand customer needs and to ensure that they are ‘joining the dots’ across all of their routes to market in order to meet them. For many of our clients, this goes both ways – we regularly support digital businesses in building the right offline presence to support their online business.
Transforming your operating model?
The right operating model is a key enabler for executing a digital strategy.
For the digital-first, your operating model and organisation has data and digital at its heart. But scaling from start-up phase to a more structured, mature and even international business can be hard. We work with digital native companies to help them scale, putting in place the tools, operating model and organisation to take their business to the next level.
If your heartland is offline, we can help you transform your operating model to embed digital at the heart of everything you do, making sure that you are well-placed to meet the rapidly evolving needs of your customers. If you are a digital native business, we can support you in professionalising and scaling your model as you grow and expand your business.
Our experience and client base in digital spans five areas:
Our cross-sector Digital team brings together experts with the capability and experience to help businesses scale and thrive in today’s digital age.
Our Thinking
Next Generation Operating Models
Brands continue to find themselves under pressure from all directions. Cost inflation, staff shortages, and ever-changing customer needs are all contributing to margin compression, which is quickly rising to unsustainable levels. While increasing consumption has offered some relief to the sector, as ESG increasingly influences consumer decisions volumes are expected to slow or stagnate.
Nurturing Customer Loyalty in China
Chinese consumers are hugely committed to loyalty programs, with two thirds of Chinese residents enrolled in 15+ programmes, and 80%+ willing to pay for an enhanced Membership product. For retailers, leisure operators and brands the benefits of a strong loyalty proposition are clear - 60% of those enrolled are more likely to recommend the company, purchase more frequently, and engage with the brand more.
The Future of the Car Dealer
Vehicle dealers are in the midst of significant change as the actions and priorities of consumers, OEMs and the government are transforming the future of vehicle distribution in all markets driving consolidation, multi-channel digitisation of consumer journeys and EV adoption.
From rags to riches
Fifteen years ago, when we heard the word ‘second-hand’, car boot sales and charity shops sprung to mind. Today, it’s come to mean something very different. The second-hand goods market (outside of China) is worth $180bn, dwarfed by the second-hand market for autos, but still as large as the GDP of Greece. This growth began with the internet, but it was the shift to online marketplaces that revolutionised the sector.
Investing in Sport: A Slam Dunk?
Sport is a vast, complex market – and it will continue to grow. With evolving fan behaviours, increasing demand for rights and technological innovation driving growth, the industry is expected to surpass $800bn by 2027. There are many areas of untapped potential, as well as growth hotspots, ranging from OTT streaming services to gambling, gaming and eSports.
8 key areas of focus for the Leisure & Hospitality sector
Despite finding ourselves in a period of economic uncertainty, with consumer confidence lower than ever, the leisure and hospitality sector has shown real resilience in Q4, which has continued into the early stages of this year. With distinctly unique circumstances in the aftermath of a global pandemic, and the chance to capitalise on under-performing areas across the sector, there are a range of important decisions businesses must make to successfully survive these turbulent times.
Private Equity & Transactions 2022
A summary of 2022 Private Equity & Transactions activity by sector.
Doing more with less
Overproduction is a long-lasting, deep-rooted problem for brands. 15-45 billion items of clothing produced every year are wasted, mostly ending up in landfill or incinerated. This is both a huge sustainability problem and a costly commercial one. Yet improving buying processes to better align with future demand can enable brands to reduce wastage, improve operating efficiency, and ultimately drive value.
7 key reflections for the retail sector
Despite a period of undeniable economic and political turbulence, the retail sector has performed resiliently, with spend holding up stronger in Q4 than many had feared. However, consumer confidence remains at an all-time low, and with continued inflation, labour shortages and supply chain challenges, retailers now face a period of belt-tightening. The next 6-9 months will be harder than the last.
Opportunities & New Frontiers in Pet
In our latest consumer insight, we partner with global investment bank and M&A specialist Harris Williams to dig deep into the pet market.
The big squeeze
In collaboration with our long-standing partners The Grocer, we’re delighted to share our annual Food and Drink Top 150 report. Despite having to adapt to Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic and increased sustainability pressures in recent years, the UK food and drink industry has shown good resilience and exited 2021 in relatively good health.
Lifelong Loyalty
Loyalty programmes have long been used as a mechanism to secure customer loyalty and many have become significantly more sophisticated in recent years. Our latest insight unpicks what it takes to generate value from a loyalty programme across the Retail, Travel and Hospitality sectors.
Hitting the brakes
Our 3rd annual Speedometer report follows up our research in 2019 and 2021. We have drawn on a survey of over 9000 consumers across 8 countries (USA, Germany, France, UK, Netherlands, Italy, China, Australia) to understand the underlying disruptive trends affecting the automotive industry.
Sound Investing
Music is roaring back as an asset class. In our latest insight we explore the value chain and industry structure, identify key trends shaping the market and unpick investment opportunity areas.
The forecourt of the future
Electric vehicle (EV) adoption across Europe is unstoppable. For fuel station forecourts this presents great change and opportunity in equal measure. In our latest report, we look at how the race to net zero is impacting the evolution of EV ownership, the future of charging and what consumers care about most, alongside its impact on forecourts. We also consider how forecourts can approach their strategy to futureproof business models and embrace the opportunities that lay ahead.
All about value
In this, our 12th annual Retail Proposition Index, published at a time when consumers are grappling with cost-of-living pressures and confidence is at a 50 year low, we reveal how consumer attitudes and behaviours are shifting.