Orkla case study

The challenge

Orkla’s digital challenge was diverse – some business units were in the middle of digital disruption, while others were business as usual. A key priority for the Nordic consumer goods company was to strengthen its presence in emerging sales channels, even as it acquired additional companies.

For marketers and sales people, the digital toolbox is so much wider than what they had before – and teams needed to be be a lot more aware of when to utilise different tools than they were in the past.

The solution

“We chose to work with Circus Street [now a part of QA] on a global scale because they were the best at the edutainment style of learning. We tried out several different vendors, but none had the engagement we have now,” said Haagen Sæther-Larsen, Head of Global Marketing Excellence.

Commitment from senior staff was important to the learning programme. Orkla saw they were very engaged. Previously, just the digital natives and digital specialists were able to talk and perform digitally, but the aim was for everyone to have those discussions and challenge one another. Now, the learning programme leveled the playing field the so marketing teams were able to have better discussions.

To meaningfully amplify their learning engagement, Orkla leveraged the “7 steps of engagement” provided by QA. Orkla got buy-in from CEOs. They got funding in advance of the funding cycle. They got digital champions on-board to advocate for the programme. “We used the full monkey!”

The results

“We learned to be bolder and braver in doing business” said Haagen Sæther-Larsen. With higher knowledge, Orkla expects its people to make better business decisions. Importantly, the company was able to grow over 7 billion (NOK) in just two years while partnering with us.