Case study that will show improvement in the "Go to Market" Strategy and best use of analytical behaviour approach

1. IC Lead - Sagar Zilpe
Client - Steel Giant
Duration - 8 Months
11 January 2017
Global product launch and Modern Architecture
CASE STUDY Pricing Solution and Market launch Strategy for Steel Manufacturing Giant
Focus area
Steel manufacturers are under immense pressure from a decrease in product price, increase
in demand volatility, and domestic product protectionism.
With an increase in commoditisation of its product lines, our client’s revenues and profit
margins were dwindling. Data was spread across disparate systems such as SAP, Excel,
custom web applications making it difficult for the client to deal with the increasing price
volatility of iron ore and energy. Risk and mitigation for Market launch was alarming great
risk to business.
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2. Global Steel Industry: The Country Factor
The reconstruction of infrastructure across the world after the Second World War prompted
steel industry rise sharply. Demand exceeded supply resulting high profitability which
translated into capacity augmentation. But since 1970’s the demand plummeted down,
resulting over capacity and high cyclicality in the Industry. The industry regained from 2002
due to China’s booming economy, higher economic developments in other BRIC (Brazil,
Russia, India) countries, emergence of CEE (Central and Easter Europe) countries as rapidly
developing economies and positive economic developments in Triad (Europe, USA and
Japan) etc. Analysts were skeptical about the long term sustainability of the industry.
The concern is vital for the senior managers and the policy makers in the steel industry to
understand the dynamics of this industry and to shape their strategies accordingly.
Our client wanted to develop new pricing techniques that would improve margins. They
wanted to build a current go to market pricing strategy that would help them serve
customers based on the specific cost to serve. The client ask was “to help make sense of
their data to increase profitability and design best way for Market Launch strategy for
customised segment” .
Note - With pre-designed products we found few major gaps that might create huddle in
launch and sales activities, it was utmost important to cater this challenges first hand ,
proactive market launch management to nullify any impact on sales and client branding
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Its of immense
importance to
identify the
“market ask”
howl designing
a product
rather than to
correct post
launch
-Client Team

3. Solution
Project was kicked-off to design
solution for Steel giant to support them buying
and selling basis analytics solution , support
client teams to gather understanding of
buying behaviours in the market.
The first step in offering actionable
insights to the client was to create an
Enterprise Data Warehouse with the
ability to filter relevant data to specific
users. After developing the data
warehouse, created dashboards that
sourced data and updated in real- time.
These dashboards offered commodity pricing trends and
how business units in the client’s various sales channels
were pricing the products. It also included an industry scorecard that
combined traditional and non- traditional financial indicators.
Product specifications were review and risk objectives were identified to drive “Go to Market
Strategy” . Phase wise approach was deployed to manage Demand and supply basis
analytical understanding
3 Months of successful soft go-live approach was agreed and success measures were at
place to ensure profit-in-hand.
Impact
The reporting and dashboard solutions’ approved user security framework allowed it to be
connected to all data marts and bring data into the warehouse.
This provided the client with a consolidated pricing view of sales and they saw a significant
improvement in profit margins.
Timely reports from our dashboard enabled our client to use this data to make decisions that
were tactical and time-sensitive.
“Iterative approach have lead to successful “Market Launch and Pricing Solution”
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