The client was looking to expand out of its regional stronghold into new growth markets for a regional soft drink producer of South Africa’s most popular soft drink brands. Over a period of 18 months the Lighthouse Team investigated, sized and evaluated a range of regional growth markets, using in-market and desk top research (customer, consumer, benchmarks) to identify market entry strategies, including RTM, brand and product, pricing, investment business case and organisational recommendations across four provinces in South Africa.

The leading distributor of prepaid products in South Africa needed to step change its approach to market to fend off significant competitive threats and new entrants for Specialists in prepaid products and the electronic distribution of virtual merchandise. A team of specialist RTM, sales and marketing consultants worked closely with the client to identify market trends, starting with consumers and working back through customers, channels and supply chains. New models of engaging with the market to communicate the consumer and customer propositions have resulted in the client winning back market share and generating new growth.

A subsidiary of the largest South African wine and spirits company, wanted to establish its own marketing and RTM strategies to drive growth and share of market for their portfolio of premium brands. The Lighthouse team created a growth strategy and high-level implementation plan, supported by clearly defined and evaluated market opportunities (consumers, brand portfolio, channels/segments) and a set of strategic options for winning. The team delivered a high-level review of the required resources and the effective organisation design backed by an assessment of the premium spirits landscape comprising a review of market and consumer dynamics, trends, competitors, brands, packs and pricing in order to understand the ease of entry.  The team mapped the routes to market and assessed channel and segment dynamics to understand product flows and influences and recommended a comprehensive and structured approach to market over a set period of time.

Created a growth strategy, obtained alignment around the challenges, desired outcomes, strategic and operational focus areas. Our team assessed category drivers and probable future outcomes for the category and identified critical success factors, ranked and prioritised. A value chain assessment was performed to identify strengths and weaknesses and created a brand, pack and pricing ladder for the current market and projected how these could evolve in the next 3 to 5 years. We then modelled the commercials and created a business case for the changes we recommended. Working with the brand team, we built a strategy on how to address these scenarios and built an action plan for achieving the business ambition, including timelines, required investments and KPI’s to measure success.  A clear way forward for the brand was shown which included pricing, product innovation and investment.

Lighthouse facilitated two bootcamps for a leading telecommunications company in South Africa – one for the in-land teams and one for the coastal teams. The primary objective of the bootcamps was to allow current incumbents to gain and practice practical knowledge, in a safe environment, which can be translated into objective and commercially sound applications back in the workplace. Needle moving focus areas will be zeroed in on. Prep work for the bootcamp included the identification of requirements for success such as capabilities required and (included an assessment) and the identification of gaps and blind spots addressed. A toolkit was then developed to cover the top five critical factors for success and essential tools of the trade. The two area manager boot camps were Intense two-day training to build essential capabilities and skills. After the boot camps, Lighthouse enacted coaching for success involving follow-ups and reinforcement of lesson learnt as well as course corrections and refocusing.

Lighthouse partnered with Africa Resource Centre (ARC) in identifying, analysing, assessing the existing Differentiated Service Delivery Models (DSDMs) landscape to identify opportunities and make recommendations for improved effectiveness and efficiencies for serving people living with HIV in Uganda. This initiative focused on existing distribution models utilised in Uganda by the Ministry of Health and developed scenarios and strategies to optimise differentiated service delivery models for recipients of care. Lighthouse worked to develop the business and investment case for long-term sustainability.

Lighthouse partnered with Africa Resource Centre (ARC) again, this time to develop a toolkit to guide governments on how to approach and implement outsourcing in the healthcare supply chain. The toolkit consists of repository of guides, tools, practices and case studies to guide and support the Ministries of Health in African countries making choices regarding the outsourcing of various  components of their supply chains to the private sector.

An initiative to refresh the Group Sales and Distribution (S&D) strategy for one of the major telecommunications companies in Africa. The Lighthouse team partnered with a core team from  leading telecommunications giant in Africa to engage key stakeholders across the organisation to capture current Telco industry Trends & Dynamics, sentiment regarding the current state of S&D at group, regional and operating levels, as well as how the role of Group S&D can shift to add the most value going forward. The Purpose of this initiative was to clearly define the role of Group S&D, how it can provide S&D thought leadership, as well as supporting Group and the S&D community to achieve their business goals with a clear value adding proposition for the business and a unique role that is specific to this Group function.

Lighthouse partnered with Project Last Mile to identify local manufacturers that have the potential to produce PPE at a surgical grade but who need financial and technical support to meet the official vendor certification qualifying criteria of the NDOH for the allocation of a grant.