Carol Franczek

Areas Carol Franczek is Knowledgeable in:

Techniques Carol Franczek Uses:

Carol Franczek's Problem Solving Skills:

1. innovation assessment expert, hold a proprietary process for quickstarting innovation
2. ideation expert participant
3. analysis/synthesis of market and consumer data including pos and consumer data
4. brand strategy and positioning
5. marketer of consumer products
6. market researcher
7. innovation speaker
8. concept writer
9. creative problem solving training
10. facilitator for ideation and brainstorming

Carol Franczek's Problem Solving Experience:

1. An air freshener product was declining rapidly; I was assigned the business and quickly decided that it should be repositioned from odor elimination to a decorative and fragrant addition to the home. Using high quality graphics, I relaunched the product and turned around the business with six months.
2. Taught professors at FSLI on innovation and how it can be applied in their work and professional careers.
3. The President of Kraft asked to create a new product manual for use across all of Kraft divisions. I lead this 15-person team. The resulting manual was heralded by the president of Kraft as a major step forward in new product development and is still used today.
4. At Kraft I was responsible for developing and managing new categories for the Grocery division. This included identifying key opportunities through structure studies, development of strategic plans, development of food products with the R& D and Manufacturing departments, as well as developing marketing plans, advertising campaigns and all launch related activities. These lines were delivered in nine months, a significant decrease versus the typical new product launch which was 18-36 months. Consumer testing was very high with top two boxes above 80%.
5. In response to an industry issue around tracking market share and consumer behavior in the telecommunications and credit card industries. I lead the team at Paragren Technologies to design and build a state-of-the-art service that coupled leading edge consumer purchase data from bill statements with an easy to use web interface for tracking and diagnositc analysis. Customers included leading telecommunications companies and credit card companies.
6. A prior study indicated that the organization needed to embrace innovation for growth. I worked with the senior HR executive to develop a plan to get support from the bottom up through training in creative problem solving. As part of this training we were able to solve significant HR issues around talent retention as well as educate employees on new techniques to solve problems more effectively.
7. A company needed to develop a pipeline of new food products. I developed a line of new products and services representing $300 million in potential revenue. Work included research synthesis, team facilitation, concept development, innovative testing and focus group execution, volume and financial forecasts and executive presentation.
8. A current manufacturing process was being hindered by a time intensive flavor changeover time. We worked with a manufacturing team to understand where the problems lay and to reduce changeover time by more than 30%.
9. An organization wanted to engage in launching a new innovation effort after several years of financial restructuring. I assessed the organization’s innovation profile combining interviews and my proprietary innovation assessment survey that provided indepth feedback on the organization's strengths and weaknesses. Following a briefing with the key executives, I facilitated a session where we developed an action plan that was hailed as “a step change in progress” by the divisional president and lead to changes in the strategic and annual plans.
10. A category was suffering from significant price cutting leading to a downward price spiral. We successfully worked with the leading market share company to turn this around through category management and pricing strategies.