Welch's fuels innovation with a structured approach to NPD

Welch’s fuels innovation with a structured approach to NPD

New product innovation is the lifeblood of the consumer goods industry. Leading CPG companies like Welch’s – a food innovator since 1849 – understand that they must continuously improve existing products and introduce winning new products to the market to stay ahead in the competitive global marketplace.

Welch’s wanted to grow market share faster than the industry average. To enable this transformational growth, they expanded into newly targeted categories. This required product innovation to align with the new market strategy, and the ability to make continually informed decisions based on trusted data.

How does Welch’s make more profitable NPD investments? The company has taken a transformational approach to innovation, process efficiency, and portfolio management that enables smarter decision making. With this new approach, the “big bets” paid off.

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The needs

Visibility to cross-functional data for decision-making and differentiation
Decisions based on facts, not conjecture
An innovation governance framework that empowers team members

The challenges

Increase effectiveness of new product innovation and launch strategies
Overcome persistent challenges to NPD, including process difficulties and resource planning

How Sopheon helped

Welch’s embraced a data-driven, disciplined process for NPD. The company took fact-based learnings into account while evaluating its new products. This approach helped “kill” underperforming products by focusing on data-based assessments and assumptions of resources, profitability, and more. Welch’s implemented a new process for product innovation. They adopted a zero-based approach to gated processes, a digitized business process that empowers teams to determine which gated framework, tools, and deliverables/tasks are relevant for their work, while ensuring process guardrails and the use of best-practices.

Confidently make go/kill decisions, focusing on resources on high-value, strategic initiatives
Get in-market tests for new ideas in 6 months
Add value to the organization through innovations
Empower teams to define the path forward

What Our Clients Say

“By leveraging best practices and zero-based deliverables, we quickly evolved our innovation process to enable better outcomes. Partnering with Sopheon got us further faster on our innovation journey!”

Christine Kwiat

Vice President of Innovation, Welch’s

The full Welch’s story was told by Christine Kwiat, Vice President of Innovation, during a Sopheon and Consumer Goods Technology (CGT) webinar.