Day 2 @ Kunstenniemi

Today we have continued working with our project and it is going really well. We have many ideas to present tomorrow for our client, Raisio. Hopefully they will like them.

Guess what we ate for breakfast? ;)

WE <3 PORRIDGE!

On our mind: enjoying Elovena snacks!

Even during our breaks we can't stay away from Elovena! We have come up with promising ideas and we are continuing with brainstorming! Still, stay tuned, this is going to be awesome! :D

On our mind: So excited about Kunstenniemi!

This morning Marie-Sophie, Rita, Maria and Anna took the bus to Raisio Group and got our exciting final task! For the moment we are drinking glögg and eating "joulutorttuja" and planning on our project, stay tuned!

Mind about a book: Sales promotion

I've read the book "Sales Promotion" written by Roddy Mullin and Julian Cummins.
The book tells about how to promote your product in a better way so you could get more customers to buy it. The writers say it is one of the marketer's most tested and most effective tool. You can read about different stages of creating and implementing innovative and succesful sales promotion in the book and it will help you to understand how to promote your product better.

Some companies use the same way to promote their products year after year and they probably do it because it has worked fine. Anyhow, it may work even better if you slightly change your ways of promoting. You can read about many different ways to change your promotion and you can also read about resaults how these different ways have worked. The little change you do, can give you an massive raise in sales. Some of the things the writers focused on are off-the-self offers, joint promotions, price promotions and premium promotions. You can also read about how a price-cutting promotion can be dangerous to your business. 

I recommend you to read this book if you want to learn more about what sales promotion is, what the benefits of sales promotion is and how to implement a sales promotion program.I think this will help us with our project, since we are working with the Raisio Group and they have many different product it is important to promote in the right way. We can think about the right ways to promote the health products, since they are our task.

Working day 3 @Hanken

Hello!

Today was the last working day and it was held at Hanken. Rita and Maria were present and we worked on what has to be done before Kunstenniemi. We wrote a mindmap about important things that we have to do before the meeting with Raisio Group and Kunstenniemi. Examples of things that has to be done are:
- everybody writes a blog post about the books we've read.
- everybody has to come up with different questions to ask on Monday, when we meet Raisio.

Rita holding our mindmap

A close up of our mind map

 

Looking forward our meeting with Raisio Group and everybody is really excited about the camp at Kunstenniemi!! :)

 

 

On our minds: meeting at "school" aka Panimoravintola Koulu

Today we had a meeting at Panimoravintola Koulu in Turku. Our meeting consisted of planning what we have to do before Kunstenniemi and present were Minna, Maria, Rita and Anna. We talked about Raisio groups possible strengths, values, target groups and brainstormed about books we could read. For the moment we are looking forward to meet someone from Raisio Group and trying to search for more information

!

On our minds: spreading ideas & health promoting food

For the moment we know this about our task: spreading ideas & health promoting food. Here we have gathered things that could inspire us!

Here are some ideas how to market new products:

10 tips for successful product promotion

http://supportawahp.com/competitions/mothersdaycomp/10-tips-product-promotion/

How to spread your ideas

http://writetodone.com/how-to-spread-your-ideas/

We found a book about spreading ideas for better health care

http://www.chcanys.org/clientuploads/downloads/Clinical_resources/Leadership%20Articles/GoodIdeas.pdf

What is the deal about spreading ideas?

If everyone shares a little, everyone will get a lot. The one who shares his ideas can have feeling about not losing anything. That’s the power of Internet and blog writing. People agree that sharing is a good idea, but it hardly happens. It’s more common in hobbies and free time than in work. One reason is that we are not allowed to use so much Facebook, Twitter, blogs during workdays.

Spreading ideas makes development easier and faster. It also increases the community thinking. Workers have more motivation and are more committed to their work.

Ideas to promote healthy eating

http://www.wechealthunit.org/workplace-health/initiatives/ideas-to-promote-2/ideas-to-promote-healthy-eating

On our mind: Working day 1!

Training session 23.10.213:

We started to discuss about the design tools and focused on the User persona tool. The user persona tool is about grouping individuals together according to their similarities. This is useful for a company to be able to adjust their strategies according to their target customers. 

We had the idea to use this tool to put our customers into personas, but that was harder than expected. Raisio operates in many different markets in different countries. We designed a mindmap to visualise their different product ranges. This mindmap also shows the key markets of Raisio, all their products are available in the following countries: Finland and the Baltic countries (except of milk products and farming supplies). 

We took a look the other design-tools and thought that for our task the design-tool Design brief could be useful for us later in our project. When we have discovered what we want to achieve with our project this tool will help us to define possible risks and challenges. Service safari was a tool that we liked, but for us it's not that useful but for Raisio itself it might. This tool is more for companies providing services.

Today one of the coaches took a photo of us three who were present, hopefully we'll be more next time! :)

//Maria, Marie-Sophie & Anna

On our mind: general information about Raisio Group

Here we have gathered together everything we found about Raisio to make it easier for us to start our task “Idea creation”.

Raisio presents themselves on their homepage (http://www.raisio.com/www/page/mainpage) like this:

The Raisio Group is an innovative expert in plant-based nutrition. Raisio is known worldwide for Benecol products that effectively lower cholesterol. In different market areas, the company is known for its strong brands that include, e.g., Elovena, Honey Monster, Sunnuntai, Nordic, Fox's and Juicee Gummee. Moreover, farmers and livestock producers in Finland also recognise Raisio as a modern agricultural trader, Raisioagro. Our key market areas are Finland, the UK, Sweden, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Estonia and the Czech Republic.

Raisio’s activities are based on tasty, ecological, healthy and safe products that meet the customer need. In all our operations, the emphasis is placed on sustainable development and continuous improvement. We actively participate in the development of the Finnish grain chain and provide our customers with tools to improve their own operations including environmental aspects.

Raisio plc is a Finnish company established in 1939, whose shares are listed on NASDAQ OMX Helsinki Ltd. The company has over 35,000 shareholders. It employs some 1,900 people and operates in 9 countries. Group's net sales in 2012 were EUR 584.1 million and EBIT was EUR 34.6 million.

Raisios contact information

http://www.raisio.com/www/page/4548 here are Raisio’s contact information in Finland. We can call some of them if we want to get answers to our questions.

Videos connected to Raisio

Here is a video where Raisio presents themselves. There is an English subtitle to this video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqa66-mMbUE

Here’s another video about the Raisio group in English with finnish subtitles where you can see a lot of Raisio’s products and you also get to know the company better: http://vimeo.com/48735015

Publications by Raisio

Raisio also publishes an Annual Report every year which contains a review of the last year and information about Raisio’s strategy, sustainability, corporate governance and financial statements. The Annual Report of  2012 you can find here:

http://www.raisio.com/www/page/8233

Raisio also has a news site where you can follow how Raisio is expanding for example. The latest news are that the Benecol products was launched in the Philippines on Monday this week (21.10.2013). http://www.raisio.com/www/page/4430

Raisio’s vision and values

Raisio’s vision is to be a forerunner in ecological and healthy snacks with leading brands as well as an active developer of sustainable food chain.

Raisio is a forerunner in healthy, ecological snacks with leading brands and an active developer of the sustainable food chain.

Company values are tools that help Raisio’s employees to reach the targets defined in the Group’s strategy. A developing, competent and motivated staff is in a good position to achieve its goals. 

Raisio’s growth strategy

Raisio aims at growth through acquisitions and through organic growth in the company’s domestic markets. Raisio’s strong balance sheet and cash flow provide a good basis to continue implementation of the growth phase. Raisio continues to be active on the acquisition front.

Growth through acquisitions:

Globalisation of the trade and its distribution channels requires additional structural arrangements, which means that the food industry also has to become more international. Acquisitions provide the fastest way to internationalise and Raisio has excellent opportunities for this. The company is small and flexible with an ability to make quick decisions. Additionally, Raisio has strong balance sheet and cash flow.

Strong balance sheet results from the divestments carried out during the last few years. Raisio divested potato and diagnostics businesses in 2007,  sold its margarine business to Bunge Limited in 2009, malt business in 2011 and non-dairy business in the spring 2013. During the growth phase, Raisio acquired two UK companies producing breakfast and snack products, Polish pasta company and a confectionery company in Czech Republic. Raisio’s strategic focus is still on ecological and healthy snacks.

Acquisitions based on strict criteria

Raisio is interested in companies that comply with its strategy and represent small and growing product segments as well as new market areas.

Raisio has defined strict criteria that potential acquisition targets need to meet. These four criteria are related to product applications, consumer brands, customer base and purchase price.

Raisio consists of two divisions: Brands and Raisioagro

These are the competitors of the Raisio Group we found so far:

Myllyn Paras (http://www.myllynparas.fi/suomi/)

Danisco A/S (http://www.danisco.com/food-beverages/)

Danone (http://www.danone.com/?lang=en)

Greencore (http://www.greencore.ie/)

//Anna, Maria & Marie-Sophie

The minds of our group: Maria

Hello!

I'm a 20 year old girl from the southest city in Finland, Hanko. After I graduated fom Hangö Gymnasium in 2011 I applied to Handelshögskolan vid Åbo Akademi and got in. So at fall 2011 I moved to Turku to study economics and now I have lived here almost two years. My major is international marketing and my minor is economics. I love living in Turku, it's a wonderful city and I enjoy studying here.

My hobbies are jogging, going to the gym and horseback riding.

This is my second time joining the Inno 58 course and I think it is going to be really interesting to work with our project.