CASE STUDY
Transforming retail execution at Carlsberg
Discover how Carlsberg strengthened commercial processes and prepared markets for adoption of Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud as its core Retail Execution platform.
1
Retail execution platform
Creating a shared foundation for sales execution across Denmark & Norway.
2
Lighthouse markets
Establishing the blueprint for Western European roll-out.
>10
Training sessions
Delivered across roles covering both On-Trade & Off-Trade channels.
Carlsberg’s situation & challenges
Carlsberg is one of the world's leading brewing groups, with strong brands and operations across multiple markets. To sharpen its retail execution and support continued growth, Carlsberg launched a strategic transformation to modernise and simplify its customer engagement technology landscape. At the centre of this transformation was Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud, supporting end-to-end sales execution activities including visit planning & execution and account management.
As the programme progressed and complexity increased, maintaining alignment between the technical solution, commercial priorities, and local market needs became more demanding. Ensuring the platform reflected sound commercial excellence practices required dedicated focus alongside the technical build. At the same time, preparing local markets for the transition called for structured User Acceptance Testing, change management, and training programmes, suitable for building capability at scale and driving genuine adoption across markets.
To address these challenges, Carlsberg partnered with NORTH to strengthen the commercial foundation of the technical solution and lead market enablement across the programme to reach its full value potential.
“A new system doesn’t change much on its own. The value comes when technology, commercial thinking and the people using it start moving in the same direction. NORTH helped us bring those pieces together.”
— David Petersen, Global Commercial Lead, Carlsberg Group
Solution
NORTH's engagement spanned two closely connected workstreams, delivered as an integrated part of the Carlsberg programme team.
Workstream 1: Strengthening the commercial solution
Working closely with Carlsberg's commercial and product teams, NORTH assessed the programme scope against Carlsberg's existing commercial processes and tools, identifying high-value opportunities to increase impact on business and to ensure all available commercial and technical possibilities were leveraged within the given time and scope.
Together, the teams identified the need for mature commercial practices alongside the technology. NORTH translated these needs into clear guidelines and processes for retail execution across visit planning, task management, and visit execution - grounding the Salesforce implementation in how frontline teams actually perform their day-to-day work.
The assessment also gave a clear picture of where the programme would create the most tangible value for commercial teams - findings that were carried forward through the implementation, market communications, and training programmes to ensure teams understood what the transformation would mean for them in practice.
Workstream 2: Enabling market readiness and adoption
In parallel, NORTH worked as an integrated part of the Carlsberg team to prepare markets for the new solution and support successful implementation and adoption.
A key part of the role was bringing business, markets, Product Owners, and technical teams closer together around shared priorities. NORTH translated between commercial needs and technical possibilities, facilitated User Acceptance Testing, and supported the prioritisation of backlog and roadmap decisions together with Product Owners, markets, and leadership. By working directly with development teams and providing input on Salesforce capabilities and commercial requirements, NORTH ensured that decisions reflected both technical best practice and business reality.
To prepare markets for go-live and drive adoption, NORTH designed and delivered training programmes using a train-the-trainer model for scalable knowledge transfer. The programmes were structured as operational playbooks - combining key findings from the commercial excellence assessment with system guidance - giving markets a practical, consistent blueprint rooted in commercial reality, not just system functionality. NORTH also facilitated market communication and IT enablement in close collaboration with product owners to ensure clarity around the upcoming changes and the expected impact on commercial teams.
By bridging commercial and technical workstreams throughout the programme, NORTH helped Carlsberg move beyond a technology deployment and deliver a transformation with real business value.
