Fellow - Global Consumer Packaged Goods Company

**Fellow Role: Global Consumer Packaged Goods Company Strategy**

**Location**:Mexico, Colombia, Brazil

**Timing**: 2-3 months

**Language**:Fluent in English and Spanish or Portguese

**Background and Project Purpose**

Since 2016, TechnoServe has partnered with a Global Consumer Packaged Goods Company on a number of strategic and operational initiatives ranging from global COVID response, retailer training across Africa, and agricultural training and sourcing in multiple geographies. To date, our work together has supported ~2,000 enterprises and ~5,000 farmers. We are excited to build upon our previous work in piloting retailer development programs with the opportunity to evolve the strategy of the regional team in Latin America.

Leaders in the Company have recognized that many of the issues that face local communities are simply too large for an individual organization, be it a private sector company or government, to resolve alone. They recognize the need to move from being an isolated actor and a participant in the development debate to positioning themselves as strategic partners in the development of the communities in which they operate, exercising their capacity to proactively facilitate and catalyze the development conversations and interventions amongst relevant stakeholders and acting as a collaborative partner to bring about positive change over the period in which they operate in an area.

The Company has started to adopt this approach in many regions is seeking to follow a similar approach in Latin America through its distribution platform. The Company’s work with retailers is guided by its priorities of empowering retailers through digital transformation, promoting digital and financial literacy, and increasing technological access.

TechnoServe will work together with the Company to design a tailored strategy across its key strategic pillars. The strategy will offer a cohesive vision across the pillars, identify opportunities to expand scale and impact of existing programs, develop an impact measurement framework, and propose possibilities for new flagship programs within the Company priority impact objectives.

**TechnoServe Fellow’s Role**

The objective of the proposed study is to define the Company’s strategy across its key corporate pillar to empower retailers and the communities that they serve in Latin America.

Broadly, the Fellow would address the following issues to achieve this objective:

- What does the business need?
- What do communities need?
- What can we learn from existing programs?
- What are best practices for addressing community issues?
- How does this align with corporate priorities?
- How does this inform corporate strategic design?

Additional detail to follow for selected Fellows.

Activities

**Secondary Research**: The initial approach to addressing these issues is conducting secondary research on issues facing local communities. First, the Fellow would review existing data on program activities (e.g., number served, income increase, revenue increase). Next, the Fellow would spend time with the Company team to understand existing initiatives, challenges faced to date, priorities for the future program, and the needs of a future program. Finally, the Fellow will also document the needs of stakeholders and the community risks that the Company has to manage. The Fellow will need to understand the retailer business context, the community dynamics and how current programs are meeting (or not meeting current needs).

**Primary Research**: Having done this, the Fellow will spend time in the priority zones meeting with the country teams to understand the current retailer business economics, the capacity and technical gaps they currently experience, and the investments required to bridge the gaps. They will also identify and interview local retailers to inform our understanding of the local ecosystem, their sophistication, and the types of needs we need to prioritize. The Fellow will then leverage the previous work done by TechnoServe to support corporate retailers in other geographies. In parallel, the Fellow will meet with local implementation partners (current and potential) to establish their current level of technical capacity and the gaps that might need to be addressed.

**Research Synthesis**: The priority issues were framed around three pillars (digital transformation, digital and financial literacy, digital access), the research of which will be happening in parallel. However, there are likely to be synergies between those and the findings from one pillar will inform the opportunity set in another (e.g., supported retailers may also offer compelling opportunities for local community development). During the research, the program will look to identify these linkages so the final result is a coherent strategy that brings together those three components of work.

The results from the Fellow’s work will be presented to the Company across four workshops d