AG ANALYTICS ⨉ DLG

Customer centricity paves the way for organic growth

How a systematic customer strategy creates organic growth

Over the last couple of years, DLG has focused on acquisitions and expansion. The group has grown significantly growth, which helps DLG offer competitive prices and keep European competitors out of the Danish market. As part of an increased focus on its primary business, DLG has started to work with a concrete customer strategy that aims to map what creates value for the customer and to strengthen profitable organic growth.

ag analytics was asked to examine why DLG excels providing knowledge about and estimating the potential of existing and new customers. Our analysis showed the following:

The account manager was the primary reason for customers’ satisfaction. Proactivity and expertise in sales provided liberty for the customer to focus on agriculture.

Fluctuating quality of food and fertilizer was a source of increasing customer dissatisfaction. The large uncertainty in the agricultural market demands more than just focus on price.

A clear customer strategy showed great potential with the existing customer base, thus providing a breeding ground for organic growth.

It is important to state the fact that the research will not be used to point fingers at each other. On the contrary, it is a unique opportunity to do things even better. We have to improve the things we all along want to be better at: to live up to our values and be even more trustworthy, value adding and ambitious towards our customers.

Jesper Pagh
Group Vice President
DLG

Systematic customer strategy creates organic growth

The first part of the customer program was to define how DLG creates value for its customers:

How does DLG contribute to creating a better business for each farmer?

In the opening phase, ag analytics visited several of DLG’s key customers within pigs, cattle and cultivation of plants to gain a deeper understanding of how DLG in reality creates value. This was combined with DLG’s own perception of their customers’ preferences and most important challenges. The result of the external and internal work was a clear description of how DLG ideally wanted to be perceived in relation to being perceived as value adding and differentiating.

Feedback from 3,500 web interviews among DLG’s customers in Denmark, Sweden and Germany which continuously were followed up by individual account managers laid the foundation for a strategic prioritizing of resources. Danish agriculture is met with increasing competition from foreign countries and great pressure not just on prices, but very much on efficiency and productivity as well.

A systematic approach to customer strategy will be a defining factor for the future focus of DLG, who will put the customer first to grow organically.


About DLG

The DLG group is one of Europe’s largest agriculture associations and todayhas about 30,000 Danish farmers as owners. The group’s activities include seeds and fertilizer as well as vegetables for catering and retail, electricity, tele-communication and sales of potted plants.

DLG has an annual turnover of approximately 59 billion DKK. The DLG group has 7,500 employees of whom roughly 3,000 are in Denmark. DLG is located in more than 20 countries.

DLG provides farmers with foods from own factories, seed corn, fertilizer, agricultural lime, crop protection, fuel and much more related to daily agricultural operation.

The DLG group is also one of Europe’s largest exporters of barley malt, seed corn, foods, bread grain and rape. In addition, DLG is via the group connected to companies involved in the processing of vegetable crops.

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