Growth is the only game in town for sustainable business performance and GBS is at the heart of delivering it with Commercial

Consumer businesses are constantly being challenged to deliver top and bottom line performance irrespective of the market conditions; inflationary pressures, a tough economic outlook or evolving and rising customer expectations. The Commercial function provides the fuel for delivering these ambitions so it needs to stay razor focussed on driving enterprise growth.

Despite this clear and critical role all too often, Commercial is distracted by time consuming and disparate transactional activities; this is a massive missed opportunity. Like many other functions in the past (Finance, HR, IT), we believe Commercial needs to reorganise and refocus the way it works by partnering with Global Business Services (GBS) to deliver non-core activities and enable its primary value proposition.

Additionally, Commercial teams need to focus their time on growth through integrated Customer and Consumer Experience. Organisations that achieve this demonstrate 6 key priorities:

• Re-defining the role of Commercial and the Capabilities that will drive growth
• Engaging directly with Consumers and Shoppers
• Building brand propositions that optimise Consumer journeys, build equity and fuel growth
• Collaborative Customer engagement to enable joint value creation
• Account teams and Representatives focussed on growth generating activities within high value Customers
• Leadership teams focussed on aligned KPIs and interventions to optimise growth