Africa’s Fast Moving Retail - FMCG Market
Africa is a growing business and economic region. There are at least 20 countries that are growing at a GDP growth rate of over 5%. And the rising economic activities are leading to better income, lifestyle changes, and more spending power. This has a direct bearing on the FMCG market. People begin to spend more, buy more variety, consume more, and move to better products and better brands. In such a scenario, the demand for FMCG and consumer good companies’ business consultants is increasing.
Urbanisation is another factor propelling the growth of the CPG market in many African countries. Countries like Nigeria, South Africa, Angola, Ghana, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Botswana, DRC, and a few others have an urban population of over 50%. Urbanization goes in favour of retail FMCG businesses like grocery stores (including departmental stores) and online grocery businesses as it gives them logistical advantages, easier access to the customers, better infrastructural facilities, skilled manpower, and wider business financing options.
Population density is yet another factor that complements the FMCG and grocery businesses. Asian countries like India, China, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Vietnam are some of the most densely populated countries in the world. And these are also the countries where the retail FMCG market is booming. With a high population density, FMCG retailers in Africa have the opportunity to play on sales volume.
Challenges in Starting and Managing a Retail Grocery Business
Major issues in the FMCG market are managing the supply chain, grocery retail and retail operations, marketing and sales, and inventory maintenance. To effectively and efficiently establish and manage grocery retails, supermarkets, hypermarkets via brick and mortar, eCommerce or omnichannel is a challenging task. Professional Grocery Business Consultants, supermarket consultants, or FMCG consultants would know that without study, planning and expertise, it is extremely difficult to set up a robust business foundation in the first place and then to manage it efficiently later. A few challenges are briefly elaborated here. A good FMCG consulting service provides may make the task easier for you.
Humongous Market Research
A good market research is a preliminary prerogative when starting a business or carrying out any business expansion project. Africa can be a good market for FMCG and grocery business, but at the same time, it is an entire continent that we are talking about. Carrying out market research to find suitable markets and assess the market feasibility can be a humongous task following the traditional methods. If you do not possess a good knowledge of market research, it is a smarter choice to hire FMCG Business Consulting service providers or a Grocery Business consultant.
Building a Competitive Business Model
Market research often leads us to competitive markets. There is no way to avoid it. Countries like Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, or Nigeria offer a good CPG customer base but it also lands you in the most competitive markets. Without a strong business model, it is difficult for any retail FMCG brand to survive in these markets. Having a proper strategic plan for Grocery Business, and CPG business model is the only way of survival in the highly competitive market.
Inadequate Financial Assessments
A good business idea combined with a robust business model just may not be enough to validate starting or expanding a business. At the end of the day, it is the profitability and ROI that will speak for your business. You will have bills to pay to keep your business running and profits to justify your entrepreneurial aspirations. Comprehensive financial forecasting and assessment need to be worked out so that you could know how your business model will perform. You just cannot jump into the waters without taking the numbers on your side.
ECommerce Complicacies
ECommerce is a fairly new playground especially where markets, support services, skills and expertise, and other relevant aspects of the business environment are not yet fully-equipped to run eCommerce in its full throttle. One must be well-acquainted with the eCommerce strategy formulation, planning, and business processes for effective business modelling in those regions to make a suitable and sustainable footing.
Achieving Operational Efficiency
Mastering operational efficiency is critical for all businesses but in markets or regions where logistics, infrastructure, automation, and technology are slightly lagging behind, it becomes all more pertinent to have robust business processes. Operational errors are a luxury, businesses cannot afford. It can directly affect vital operations like the flow of inventory, merchandising, and order fulfilment.
How YRC can help you as a FMCG Business Consultant: a glimpse
We will be putting the full might of our domain experience and expertise in the field of FMCG retail and eCommerce. Whether it is a brick and mortar CPG supermarket, grocery business or an eGrocery store, our Grocery Business Consultant will provide robust planning and implementation assistance at every step of the journey. Here’s a glimpse of what we do in FMCG and online grocery consulting. YRC provides FMCG Consulting, fast-moving consumer goods FMCG Business Consulting services to set up your online FMCG business.
Our comprehensive research report, prepared by our Grocery Business Consultants, is aimed at helping clients gain the bigger perspective of the market in question and extends to providing them with detailed, meaningful and actionable insights. It will include feasibility study, mapping of the target audience, competition analysis, assessment of sales channels, SWOT analysis, demand and price analysis, market prioritization, and future proposition.
What FMCG consultants or grocery consultants effectively do in business model development is identify and define what can give your departmental store or eGrocery business a distinguished brand identity in the face of the prevalent competition. They will also define the omnichannel strategy, identify the business-IT requirements for your grocery store or online FMCG business, and map the operational requirements. What you will get from all these is the framework of the value chain and internal capabilities required to deliver the intended offering and brand value. YRC helps in developing business models through the FMCG Business Consulting service.
YRC’s team of Grocery Business Consultants puts to use a detailed, comprehensive, and systematic process in making the financial projections and assessing the commercial viability of a business idea or project. It will cover the assessment of capital and initial investment requirements, estimation of operational expenditure and sales turnover, cost analysis, purchase and inventory planning, profit and loss projections, and beyond. This will help you assess the feasibility and workability of your project strictly from a commercial perspective. You can avail of all the benefits through YRC’s FMCG Consulting services.
Irrespective of the business process, if a physical or online grocery business seeks to become a process-driven enterprise, then it must incorporate Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). Whether it is purchase and inventory management, order fulfilment or payroll, our SOP experts will map out a planned and defined operational roadmap for each business process following a proven set of methodologies applied to unique business requirements.
A precondition for choosing and implementing ERP systems is to have defined business processes. We offer ERP implementation and follow-through services customized as per the unique business requirements of the clients in a planned and phased manner that includes project planning, data conversion, education and training modules, testing, and deployment. The Grocery Business Consultants at YRC helps you to choose the appropriate ERP implementation plan through the FMCG Consulting services.
Whether or not eCommerce channels are in use, a strong and effective online presence has become a must for all retail and grocery businesses. Because of the heightened importance of online applications (mainly search engines and social media) in our everyday lives, people are spending an increasingly higher time on their digital screens. That is where B2C businesses have a great chance of making their brands visible to their target audience. YRC will assist you in formulating the right digital marketing strategy for your FMCG store or eGrocery business that will cover identifying the digital platforms for marketing campaigns, formulating content strategies, tracking the performance of the campaigns for improvisations, and preparing the marketing budgets trough its FMCG Business Consulting services.
We are a boutique retail consulting firm. To know more about our FMCG consulting services or if you have any query on how we can help via hypermarket consulting and supermarket consulting, drop us a message and we will get back to you.