The AAK Way successfully completed
Having guided our business for the past three years, our
company program The AAK Way came to a close at the
end of 2019.
Our key focus with the program has been to enable
continued organic growth, to help us improve our operating
16
profit year-over-year by 10 percent on average,
and to build a stronger AAK for the short, mid and long
term.
By establishing a strong foundation at the beginning
of the program, followed by a dedicated and continuous
execution, we are now able to reap the harvest of our
many great efforts within the program’s five priority
areas.
Go to Market
A very important activity within Go to Market has been
the global customer survey that was conducted in 2018.
Based on both quantitative and qualitative input from
close to 1,000 customers, we have put strong actions
in place to further enhance our customers’ experiences.
We have also taken our go-to-market approach to
new levels by developing strong training platforms
and knowledge-sharing networks, as well as rolling
out a high-level sales program to hundreds of go-tomarket
colleagues globally, supporting our Customer
Co
Development approach.
Operational Excellence
In this priority area we have strengthened our
competitiveness within sourcing and made significant
improvements within the responsible sourcing of our
raw materials globally. To achieve a cost-efficient and
flexible operation, we have also between our production
plants ensured benchmarking and best practices for
critical operational needs.
Special Focus Areas
Special Nutrition and Dairy+ (including the plant-based
foods industry) were identified as two special focus
areas believed to hold significant potential for future
growth. Important achievements include expansion into
new markets, significant growth within Infant Nutrition,
and a successful launch of our AkoPlanet™ brand
has supported us in generating a very strong pipeline
of solutions for the fast-growing plant-based foods
industry.
Innovation
Innovation is decisive for being the preferred partner
to our customers and for securing that our solutions
add significant value to their products. During the
course of The AAK Way, we have further developed
our innovation processes and several supporting tools
and guidelines. We have also launched a global social
platform internally to drive proactivity input for our
innovation pipeline as well as added new Customer
Innovation Centers in several AAK regions.
People
Aiming to have a great leadership in our organization,
we have within priority area People invested significant
time and effort in leadership development globally.
Workforce planning has also been an important priority
in order to secure the future of AAK.
To summarize, The AAK Way has given us many
achievements to be proud of. As we set out to do, we
have continued to deliver organic growth, we have
improved our operating profit in accordance with our
ambition, and we have made AAK a stronger company.
Innovation
Go to
Market
Operational
Excellence
Special
Focus Areas
AAK Way of Selling
Customer Co-Development
Sourcing Excellence
Cost Effective & Flexible
World Class Delivery
Special Nutrition
Dairy+
INNOBO - Products