Planning the Right Experience w/ Aidan Bocci

Aidan, what's your mission in life right now?

So my mission is to change the way that consumer goods companies with their retailers do customer business planning. Because if they change the process or make the process much, much better, they don't just save themselves lots of time. They make great decisions. The decisions drive great behavior, and the behavior drives great results for them.

Hi, I'm Adam Durell and I like to think of my role as, well, a bartender. I'm making up the perfect cocktail. You know, we take a shot of B2B account sales and a spoonful of customer experience, and we mix it together. Well, shaken, not stirred, of course, serve it over ice. And that's serving up the account experience podcast. Truly the vodka martini of the CPG business world. You know, in every episode, I like to shoot the breeze with an industry leader to share best practices and get some tips to help you develop your account experience program. I'm also a father of four, a founder, and I'm fanatically interested in human relationships, and I love anything that furthers the quality of business relationships. Today my very special guest is Aidan Bocci. He's a really well known expert in the field of global consumer goods and in the retail business. For many years, he was instrumental in improving consumer goods companies with their business planning processes. You know, in his career, he's worked with, I believe, most of the top 100 FMCG companies in the world. And he's worked really well with C suite leaders in more than 30 of them. He's also the co founder of a new business called Growz, which is innovating on processes, designing growth activities that deliver real results. He's quite a provocative speaker. I've met him many times. Welcome, Aidan. How are you doing today?

Very good today. Good to see you.

Well, I hope I didn't put you off too much with the introduction, Dave, how does that fit?

It was acceptable.

Okay, that's setting the tone. I love it. Tell us about Groves. What's the problem that grows is solving?

Well, so as you indicated in the introduction, so I've been around the consumer goods business for a very long time. I got into it, I think, at 18 years old. And so what I'd seen in my whole journey from being a rep on the road working in big corporates like Procter and Gamble, and then in my consulting career, which is where I spent a lot of my time in the industry, was you go into different consumer goods companies and there's a really, really important thing they need to do, which is build their business with Retailers and ultimately they are all doing it in different ways because everyone's inventing their own way of doing it. There's lots of different discussions that are had, there's loads of different meetings. It all feels like the big pitch coming up to the retailer, but when you actually strip it right back. Every consumer goods company needs a really good planning process for building their business with customers. It's fundamental to the future success of the business.

Yeah.

And so what Groves was about was taking all of that, learning all of that understanding of best practice across the industry and turning it into one platform for planning with your customers so that you can optimize your future business.

That's pretty interesting for me, I don't know the details of this planning process with retailers, but so I'm guessing also from the time when I worked in retail, it's like a once a year effect with the CPG vendor, or is it more often than that? Can you give us some color as to what the plan is?

When you think about most consumer goods companies have been around for a very long time and nowadays a lot of big retailers have been around for quite a long time as well and there's always been lots of smaller retailers. So yes, there are critical times in the year when there are interactions, actions that are absolutely about going, we're really going to do this and this is what we're going to execute through the stores that relate to the suppliers, brands. But actually that kind of work needs to go on all year. There's all sorts of different touch points. And so what's really important to do is not just think about now, not just think about next quarter, not just think about even next year's plan, but be constantly thinking longer term. Because when you're a consumer goods company, you're in business with a retailer, if you're of any size, you're probably going to be in business with them in 20 years time.

Right.

So thinking ahead is really important because that's how you get today. Right.

So let me just get this right. So the planning process is not just a once a year event, it has to be continuous. So probably some sort of big plan where you set the stall out but you have to keep it, controlling it. But also, as you're saying, the key to success is bringing in that long term vision as well. I mean that's quite a tall for most people. I mean, you know, most people struggle to plan something beyond next week. So how do people typically go about it today?

Well, lots of different things, ways that they do things and I think you're exactly right. It's difficult because if you don't have a really clearly defined way of doing something, trying to think longer term is very, very difficult because what you're always responding to is the pressure of today, how people currently do it. It depends on the company. So some companies are literally just exist on meetings, selling stories, some Excels, PowerPoint and Quita, and some milestones in the year because you have to have some kind of process of some sort to get you through the things that you need to make decisions on. The times when you need to actually neg negotiate a deal with a retailer to say that's what we're going to do next quarter. So it goes from that through to some of the most significant global corporates have a much more structured process. They have what they would call a key customer playbook. So they're saying this is how we're going to do it. But then when you kind of peel it back, they're still doing it all in PowerPoint and Excel. So what's happened is they've got lots of software for managing data, so they've got operational processes like trade, promotions, management trade promotions optimization, salesforce execution, financial forecasting, demand forecasting. Those processes are really about making a plan happen. They're not about designing and agreeing the plan. And so any company at the moment is struggling to really effectively run a process to design the longer term and build the real plans and the execution. There's more systems and tools to do it.

Right. I mean, if I also think about from my experience in planning, quite often you do a great plan, you're really happy about it, you shake on it. Yes, this is the way we're going to do and then people forget it. Right. It's. Nigel also speaks about this as being like a work of fiction sometimes.

Yeah.

Can you bring in examples to life of people who've done some really bad plans?

Well, not the individuals. I'd be a bit harsh on a podcast. But the reality is if you think about what you're doing is you're agreeing a plan with people. And the fundamental reason why plans either happen or don't is because of hearts and minds. Right. So when you think about a plan and whether it gets. Because the bad example is, I think it's Nigel's describing. But I go into my discussion, my negotiation, we all nod that we're going to do that and then we all let each other down. That's the bad example. And that happens a hell of a lot. And some of those reasons why people get let down are very valid because bad stuff can just happen. So you can have a problem where a line just breaks down in a factory or the retailer has a problem with some of its store operations or something like that, and you go, well, these are things we just have to solve. And they're about trying to make the plan happen. But that can mean some of the plan doesn't happen. That's execution of the plan. But the real question is, if it's about hearts and minds, then what you actually need to agree on with a plan isn't just the plan, it's why. And so way we always encourage people to think and the way we always try and help them build out their planning processes is you need to map out in your process on every step of the journey why. And not just for you in the sales function, but for you in all of your functions within the manufacturer. But guess what? In all those functions with the retailer as well, any touch points that you have, everyone has to understand the why. Because otherwise what they're doing is they're nodding to something that should happen without fundamentally agreeing to it. Because going yes is very different. Going in my own head, yeah, I'm actually going to do that.

So what you're saying is it's almost like the cultural impact that's more important, how you make that connection with the customer. But let me then step into the customer thing. This is all about, you know, account experience. That's my motivation. So how does the planning process impact the end customer experience? You know, the retailer, I can see how it would totally benefit the vendor. But how, you know, what's the benefit in there for the retailer?

In simple terms, it's absolutely massive and it's incredibly interconnected. So when you think about the experience that a customer might have in the world of consumer goods and retail, you've got different types of customers. So you have in the kind of the smallest sets of customers you call fragmented trade. They can be just a little mom and pop store somewhere. They could be a store on a market through to a small independent retailer. They've got no management structure around them. There's just loads and loads of little outlets. Then you could have things like wholesalers or distributors that sell to those outlets to provide some kind of central function that is not owned by those outlets, a different company entirely. But then of course you've got chain retailers which can be enormous retailers like Tesco or Walmart or Carrel. And what they're doing is they're consolidating all of the operations to optimize then what happens in the outlets. And they often have a lot of control over the, of the actual outlets themselves. But so in the sense the customer experience. So if you're an outlet you are getting the result of all of the plans all the time. Whether those plans were determined by the manufacturer, which will definitely have a, they've had an impact on it. Whether they're determined by head office in a retailer, whether they're determined by the kind of management of a distributor or a wholesaler, or whether it's the field sales rep going out there and delivering a service or a merchandising service to an outlet that's not controlled by head office. So what you have is, I'm going to say something a bit sort of roundabout, that sort are true and sort are not right. So the customer experience in theory is all about people because it's the interaction that I had with those people. But people behave in certain ways and do certain things fundamentally because of decisions that they and other people make. So it's actually the decision making that's driving a lot of what's happening in these interpersonal interactions that create then this customer experience. And so if I give a real example, so I can sit there in my planning process and I can say that we need to activate this brand in a certain way. So I want to put this great point of sale material up, I want to signpost this new fantastic innovation that we're bringing to market and it goes down and down and down the planning process and then the rep takes it out to the outlet and then the outlet goes, I can't put down my store, I really want your mpd, but I can't activate it because you've given me completely the wrong thing. So their customer experience is rubbish because what you're doing is you're not solving their problems. Your decision making process in this journey has failed to understand what they need. And you could have the most wonderful rep in the world, but they're not in control of all that decision making. And so the customer experience incredibly directly tied to the whole planning process is because there's all of these decisions impact right throughout the planning process on what the customer receives. And only some of those things are in control of that rep who is interacting with that customer.

Yeah, I'm guessing also if you get some great point of sale material out there, but it doesn't fit the space of the customer, if you don't have a planning process that keeps reviewing that, you're going to miss out on that. Right.

Well. And if you're not getting that feedback back from the outlets, which is much more about the customer experience. And how do you know to change what you'll do going forward? Because what you need to do is create this real kind of loop of keep building things, doing things, making those decisions, but have the granular understanding of what execution looks like, which you can, of course, you can go into stores and you can take photographs and you can gather data, but sometimes it's actually really good just to hear what somebody said and what did they actually experience.

Have you seen examples where manufacturers have shipped out point of sale material, which we all know is pretty expensive and it's just not used by the retailers? Have you seen that happen?

How many hundreds of times? I've been a rep, I've been out with reps hundreds and hundreds of times over the years. And it's sometimes you go in and the point of sale material's not there and then you go back into the kind of the storeroom at the back or the warehouse or whatever it is and just see it sitting there and they go, yeah, I couldn't fit it in, sorry. Or they just chucked it and that's it.

You don't even know. Right. If it's being used or not. Yeah, yeah.

And well, if you're not seeing them quick enough.

Yeah.

Because you can't see everyone all the time. So let's say you only see them every three months.

Right. Which is probably normal.

They can't even remember what they did. They may have chucked it or if one of their staff might have done so. But you don't find out these things unless you're kind of regularly having as many touch points as possible in different ways to actually collect that insight around what they're actually experiencing.

So you think if you get the planning process right at the beginning and the planning cycle, that can really impact the experience in the retail store at multiple levels.

Definitely, definitely. Because what the planning process should do is build insight from what's happening in execution and use that for the continuous learning to constantly improve the planning decision. There are some planning decisions that you make that are, let's say, about the overall structure of the category from a consumer perspective and where the different current emerging and latent demand might lie.

Yeah.

And that dictates a certain set of unique research that you need to do to understand usage and attitudes, but equally the practicalities of what works and what doesn't, the constraints that you might have around the way that you operate and understanding the nuances of the impact of those things on actually what actually happens through execution. Because it's B2B. Right. So consumer goods is B2B in still almost the main. Almost all. So what you're trying to do fundamentally is to get to the point where you really are controlling in the best possible way the experience for the consumer. Now you don't have that direct relationship. So the best proxy to the consumer experience is the trade customer, that B2B knowledge of what's really going on and constantly bringing all of that insight up into your planning process to always improve execution.

Yeah, but as you say, it's quite difficult to really pull this all together because you know, in a large modern retailer there's going to be multiple stores, hundreds of them, maybe geographically dispersed, and you've got a central administration that's driving that. Other chains are more geographically dispersed. So how can you bridge that? How can you make sense of that experience? How does the vendor make sense of that through your tool?

Well, the first thing that you need to understand is that for different structures of routes to market, you need to adapt your planning process. So the way that you deal with what we call a modern trade retail at a Tesco or Carreport, you have a huge amount of work to do at the head office agreeing the plans, hopefully getting to know properly their store operations, start going to their stores and have. You will have lots of interactions with them from a kind of merchandising perspective to make sure things are happening in stores in the right way. But fundamentally you're planning through a head office. When you think about a fragmented channel, the fundamental thing you need to understand from a planning perspective is first of all what is the actual outlet universe? Because you can't just ask a head office how many outlets they've got and what they all look like. So if you're thinking about somewhere in India or parts of East Africa where there's just all sorts of just little random outlets all over the place that understand of the outlet universe is really important. Second thing that's really important is to segment it in the right way because you need to treat different outlets differently. So you need to segment according to the nature. So what type of outlet is that? Because that determines things like how we would activate, what point of sale we would need, but also then the value of it does that determines how you're going to invest. And on top of that you then need to think of the planning process about what's my route to market operating model. So those are things like, well, is IT distributors are there, wholesalers are there, buying groups? How's the stock physically get to the outlet? And actually as your planning process needs to involve all of those different constituents and actually you need to make sure that you're delivering all the right things for them because they're all playing a role in this route to the consumer. And that's where it gets really complex.

It's a really complex landscape, isn't it, for the vendor really has to navigate the direct relationships, the second tier relationships and so on. So what's changing in this world? I mean, from my experience in it, I can really see how that the master data for the CPG vendor is becoming much more important. But that's been a shift, right? Because that's, you know, some years ago that was not important. But you know, I talk about the Amazon ification of this world when they need to get directly. How do you see that shift happening and who's good at it and who's, who's lagging behind at the moment in.

Terms of when you say the shift of utilization of data around your route to market because there's the internal master data of a company around its own operations. But that kind of.

I'm thinking more about how, you know, in the terms of CRM, effectively, you know, really thinking about how our CPG vendor can really understand the landscape, as you say, all of these vendors and thinking about smaller and smaller, smaller segments of retailers. Do you see that challenge that's in the market at the moment?

It's a massive challenge. So if I look at most consumer goods companies today, they have got far more data than they've ever had. But again, when you think about the way that you ideally look at your future business, you've got to really understand the data sets that are really important to make decisions from. Because one of the challenges with too much data is if you don't really know the questions that you're trying to ask, you haven't been really specific about what you're trying to do. What you end up with is correlations and correlations don't mean cause. And so that really important thing, and I think this is the thing that it is evolving, but it needs to just really, really keep evolving, is two things. One is the absolute clarity of the questions that you're trying to answer because otherwise all your people are going to be overwhelmed by the data. And the second thing is bringing the external data into the company because it's very easy when you're sitting within the four walls of your own organization to Be talking about all of your own data about your profits and your margins, but what you really need to know because it determines the future profits and the future margins. Well, what's our customers profit, what's their margin? And actually how do they feel about us? What do they think we do that's really great. And what do they think we do that we need to change? And getting that kind of data outside in is fundamental because that's the future of the company and that's what really good companies have always done. They're always customer first.

Yeah, that's really true. And often it's forgotten, isn't it, in the way of doing this. Well, that's also the, you know, that's what I'm particularly interested as well.

This podcast is sponsored by CustomerGage and they're the experienced leader in the CPG market. Let me tell you why they're contacting more people in the independent trade and modern trade than any other customer experience company out there. And you'll know the brands that they work with us, we're talking Coca Cola, AB, InBev, Heineken. Just E takeaway. They're literally pulsing millions of contacts around the world in more than 60 countries multiple times a year, delivering those insights to thousands and thousands of frontline employees in those companies. But you know, it's not just the CPG business CustomerGage is famous for. They're ranked number one for B2B customer experience by Gartner. However, if you're in the CPG business and you have not contacted Customer Gauge to understand what is going on in your business, you're seriously missing out because we know there are other people out there just doing it once a year. Well, Customer Gauge gives you customer insights 52 weeks a year, right to the front line in real time. It's going to absolutely transform your business like nothing else. But don't take our word for it. Listen to the podcast and they'll tell you exactly why.

So how does that bookend the planning process from what you know, you understand, you're like right at the beginning of the process that right plans. How does the customer feedback and the customer experience then glue it all together? How can people leverage that?

Well, the first thing to understand though, customer experience is perception. Perception is incredibly important, but it is perception. And so one of again the things around the right questions to ask, is this an emotional or a limited response to something that's happened or is it a factual indicator of something that is actually broken that we need to change? So the way that you kind of use that customer experience. Insight is phenomenally important around bringing the right decisions again back into the planning process, because what you don't want to be doing is changing your plans because you haven't communicated something in the right way, as opposed to changing your plans because it didn't work, which is really important to do. So if your communication is wrong, change the communication. If the product's not good, rebuild the product. If your supply chain is not working, fix the supply chain, but really understand the root cause. And that for me is the crux of what customer experience helps you to do, is to start as your own. As you look at it from your own expertise and all the different things you know about your business and your great planning process is isolate things that are about perception versus reality and treat them really different.

Recently, Aidan, you know, you keep your finger on the pulse of the retail trade pretty closely. There's been a lot of things that have happened in the last few years. We've had Brexit, the pandemic, the price of fuel going up, shortages. I came across a company the other day that said absenteeism was his number one problem. So there's all this turmoil that's going on. You know, who's. What are the issues facing CPG companies at the moment and how are they coping with it?

Yeah, well, I guess one of the things that retailers are experiencing is quite a lot of people are just burnt out in the buying teams because they've just been dealing with so much. And so they've been, you know, dealing with the whole pandemic. But then they're dealing with all of these changes constantly coming through from suppliers and that's difficult negotiations. But also just then creates loads of administration because they have to keep changing the pricing and putting all the administration through, putting decisions into different pricing committees and things like that. So there's a. Just a lot of people out there are pretty exhausted, but equally so. One of the things I think is just a reality is that we have got to shift back to this model where there is this variability in things like pricing, because as a supplier of any branded goods, you determine your prices. Now the retailers are going to get probably quite worried about each time you bring a price rise. The real reason is can they trust you that they're getting the right deal? But this kind of mode of we just need to do this stuff because we've got. That's going to happen, it's happening. And I actually think what's happening is people are getting a bit more used to that now.

Right.

So they're starting to cope with it better. But some of the dynamics that you see, they can't be changed by individual companies because it's the structure of the company. So if you're a discounter, this has played into your hands really well because actually you are the lowest cost. That's always going to be the case because you've probably got 2,000 SKUs, whereas some of your big box competitors can have 20, 30, 40, 50, 60,000 SKUs in their stores. So you can just operate on kind of much lower costs. And if you're a more premium retailer, like a Waitrose or an Ocado, and also some of the online retailers, I mean, the way that online works, what it actually is, it's a more expensive proposition because the cheapest would be somebody goes to the store, picks up the goods and takes them off in their car or walks back to their house. That could be convenience, that could be a supermarket. But you think about online, what's happening is you're paying a premium, somebody should bring it to your door so you don't have to put in the effort. Go get it. So the online world, the kind of more premium retailers, but also some of the big grocers who perhaps haven't got everything right over the last few years, you look at the individuals, they're trying their hardest, but the business model's just not that well suited to this environment. And so we're seeing those shifts down on the kind of online isn't where it used to be and it's not going away by any means, but people will make choices around whether that's where they want to spend their money in an environment like this.

Yeah, that's a really good insight. And definitely over the last few years, private equity and VC money has subsidized a lot of that home delivery stuff. With that gone away, that's, you know, that's also exacerbated the problem there. But you know, when you talk about the way that the planning approach impacts customer experience, which categories do you think get it right? I mean, who's leading in this? Is it beverage, you know, or dry goods? Who's most advanced in this, do you think? You don't have to name names And I realize that sense, yeah. The category that's getting it right, would you say?

That's a good question. In terms of who's getting customer experience right or the customer planning process?

Well, if you think about it, yeah, I think the two are linked. I think that's really what you're saying, who's got the best view of this, perhaps the best vision of success on this?

Well, the people who tend to have been better at it in some ways are the companies who are more dependent on getting it right. So if you've got a product which you have got as much as you can produce, you can sell all of it and you can sell all of it at a good margin and customers will bite your hand off for it. They don't require in their mind the same level of customer experience because at the end of the day they can't order more than they can get for you. It's that classic kind of their limited supply world. So you could say, well, they've got it right because they've got such an amazing product or such a limited supply of product that maybe the customer experience doesn't matter as much. Whereas if you're somebody who is incredibly dependent. So if you think about actually own label suppliers are often the best on customer experience because they are in bed with a retailer in a very different way from a branded manufacturer.

That it's an interesting insight because what's.

Actually happening is they're collaborating on the fundamentally what the proposition is right with the retailer and then they are manufacturing for that retailer. Whereas if you're a brand, well, you're not manufacturing for that retailer, you're giving it to everybody and you're negotiating that retailer to get the best profitability for you and you're trying to land your plans. But so there's kind of a spectrum from. There's people who. I'll come back to why I don't think this is true in a minute, but people who think, you know, they are where they are now and they don't need to worry about selling anymore because they're selling enough, they feel like they don't need the customer experience. Own label are pretty brilliant at it because it's a different type of relationship with the trade. Not always because it depends on transactional. It is, but it's. The own label suppliers are really in bed with the retailer. Their customer experience is very good. Yeah, the branded manufacturers, it varies a lot. It's not the same as own label. But in a way with the branded manufacturers, they're the ones where you. You need to really drive a culture of customer first because the dange is they don't get close enough to the customer and some are really good at it and a lot of them over time kind of forget about it a bit because they're focused on their own internal operations and they Hope that their brand strengths will carry them through. And that's where I come back to. If you've got a situation where you're in a very premium category or you've got limited supply, or you don't think this retail is as important to you, that for me is not a reason to not focus on customer experience because you don't know when you're going to need them.

I'm just saying.

And you don't know how your supply is going to change.

I'm just following your thought through, by the way. That's super interesting. So you're saying that in the past brands have related or, sorry, brands have been falling back on their brand strength to carry them through. And now maybe the battleground is moving towards perhaps data and customer experience. And the way that you relate to this and that actually has really big implications for big brands, doesn't it? Because people that then able to serve the retailers, maybe the customers better are going to win.

I guess that's really interesting, definitely because well also think about what's happening right now. So we've got cost price going, inflation going through. People have got the same wallet, but that gets them less things. So they make choices across brands according to which things they value the most. But if the retailers fundamentally control the route to market and the experience around a lot of your brand, if you don't get the retailers and their customer view of you to be supportive to delivering those plans, then the consumer doesn't see the best representation of your brands and they'll make a choice to go elsewhere, either a better representation or just switch to own label because it's so much cheaper. So do I really need that? So it's customer experience right now is just critical.

That's interesting. Now I was really going to try and get you to think about which categories you think are doing better than others. You did avoid the question. I'm going to try one more time.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

So, okay, so you're just going to take a very wide approach. It is hard for me to avoid the question about who's good at it. But let me pose you something because I saw yesterday in the paper Diageo appointed a new CEO. First female CEO that they appointed the Deborah Cruz in there. She's had a really good experience in the CPG business. So how do you think that the appointment of a new CEO affects it? Will that trickle down through the rest of the business? Are you able to speculate on from your point of view about what could be improved in that business?

I Wouldn't speculate on an individual company in this call. I don't think that's appropriate for me to do. But what I would say is in any situation where I've been working with a consumer goods company, the CEO changes. There is a significant change unless that CEO has been working very closely with the past CEO and they've aligned on a long term strategy. So it really depends on the personal relationship they've had and what the overall direction with the board is. Often you do get a significant change because people are stamping their mark on the company and what they want the future to become. But yeah, it's been very successful company. So my suspect is that there will be some things that are changed, but probably not a course redirect because what they've been doing is been pretty successful over recent years.

Yeah. Looking at the results, the it's been hugely profitable. Congratulations on that. But maybe some sales growth has stalled a little bit. So that might be some of the issues. You're right, we shouldn't speculate on that stuff. But I thought was super interesting and you know, we think about, we talk about customer experience. I know Fred Reichel believes very much that female led businesses actually are better at driving customer experiences. He says it might be a cliche, but he says that there's some recognition of customer love there.

So.

So might be interesting to see where they go with that. I'm very curious. Okay, before we go, Aidan, give us a few tips and tricks for people who are thinking about improving their planning process. How should they go about it?

It's quite a big question because also the best thing is when you think about a planning process, it involves all the senior management of your company, all your different functions. And if it's the customer business planning process, it also involves the retailer. So the first thing is that you need to really think about what the case for change is for you because this is not a small undertaking. So when you think about changing a planning process, you need to understand what you think a good process would really look like, what efficiency gain that could drive for you, what revenue growth opportunity you get off the back of it you believe and actually as well, what's the impact on the customer experience. And that can be from something like you might track against hamnily against the advantage survey or you might use NPS score. There's a more pulse way of looking at the wealth. But fundamentally it starts with the case for change because this is about aligning a group of people to work fundamentally differently to make decisions, cross functions so it's a big thing. But what I would say as well, though, is that the power and the value in changing the way that you approach your planning processes with customers is just enormous. I mean, we've done a lot of research across the industry and about 20 different consumer goods companies, lots of different countries, lots of individuals in each to say, well, look, let's picture what the world could look like differently. What's the value in it? Yeah, it's a 35% increase in efficiency for the sales organization. It's 5.25 hours a week.

Wow.

And 4.8% revenue growth. So CAGR each year. And so this is huge. Right. And transformation of the customer experience as well. So these are all participant. It's not. We haven't done it by looking at the process and doing the maths. We've done it by talking to people and talking about their day jobs and thinking about what would change. But it is a big, big opportunity.

So there you have it. Improving the planning process can make a third, you know, 33% difference in efficiency and adding nearly 5% to the growth rate. That's quite astonishing. Aidan, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on this today. How do people reach you? If they want to contact you or find out more about the story of.

Grows, they can email me on Aidan. Aidan.bocci b o c c I. And it's at groze.com which is G-R-O-W-Z Z.com or just go to www.rose.

Great. Thank you so much. Aiden. It's really great to hear from you. You're quite a provocative thinker in this experience. Take care and speak to your seat.

Adam.