Success story

Using performance dashboards to increase sales at an international beer company

By Razvan Nistor

One of the largest international premium beer brands struggled to get a systematic 360-degree view of the key performance indicators driving their business. The necessary data was fragmented, spread across too many sources, and the IT department was overloaded with ad hoc requests for operational business questions. Business analysts with excel-level skill sets weren’t able to systematically combine 10+ data sources to identify performance gaps in sales and marketing initiatives in the required time.

The Solution

Keyrus partnered with the organization as a full-service BI and advanced analytics partner. The company chose Qlik Sense as their BI tool because of the powerful associative engine that would allow the cross-functional analysis the sales and marketing teams required.  

Keyrus created a consolidated data model that integrated all relevant data sources into a single source of truth. We built and delivered key strategic dashboards for the organization that guided and tracked the company’s performance along the critical KPIs. 

Our team rolled out the dashboards and provided training sessions so that business users could apply the insights in the day-to-day management of their brands or regions.

Keyrus was able to provide almost immediate value using Qlik Sense’s data modeling capabilities. We consolidated over 20 data sources into a single coherent framework that fed a number of key reports even before a final harmonized data warehouse was constructed. This brought immense and immediate value to the business while a heavier IT-based project continued in the background.

Sales performance dashboards

Keyrus rolled out eight consolidated reports that are used by the sales team to identify key gaps in performance and sales metrics. The reports consist of interactive Qlik Sense dashboards for power users and static NPrinting Excel reports for the entire sales organization.

The Qlik reports are structured to provide insight into the factors that affect sales, but they also leave the sales team with immediate and actionable items. For example, accounts missing high rate-of-sale packs are instantly flagged and placed in a table along with the packs they are missing. Sales representatives can then directly instigate conversations with their distributors to ensure the top packs are being placed in outlets. 

For displays, any accounts with low displays and high competitor displays are flagged and available for output. The ability to quickly slice and dice transactional data (the main fact table is over 100 million rows large) makes any conceivable analysis possible. 

The dashboards include the following: 

• Depletions Analysis: Dashboard showing sales performance for all relevant dimensions against plans and previous time periods. Identifies accounts with key gaps to competitors and previous periods.

• National Accounts Analysis: Dashboard showing sales performance of key national account directors and managers. Comparison to national and state averages highlight underperforming regions.

• Display Analytics: Consolidated dashboard between volume and display data showing key gaps to competitors in feature activity and execution. Analysis by size-of-display and location quickly identify accounts with the greatest opportunities.

• Distribution Analysis: Dashboard analyzing which stores are selling key mandatory packages.  Advanced ETL allows the company to identify the gaps in sales data so that sales representatives have a direct list of actionable packs that they can encourage distributors to place in the store.

• Sales Analysis: Dashboard of depletions, display, market, planning, and marketing data in one consolidated report. Sales directors can quickly identify underperforming regions, gaps in display, issues with distribution, and comparisons to key market competitors.

• Marketing Analysis: Dashboard showing key marketing metrics, GRPs, media spend, brand health metrics; all tied to volume display and distribution data. Directors can identify how media spend translates into increased volume depletions.

• Management Team Report: A high-level dashboard showing KPIs across all business units, specifically designed for market managers.

• Volume Planning: An ETL engine capable of facilitating advanced allocations across all business dimensions for annual planning.

Results

The dashboards allow the business to instantly identify underperforming regions, channels, and packs and are used in monthly performance reviews with brand and market teams. RED or underperforming sectors on these dashboards provide instant motivation for the sales or marketing field teams to address performance gaps. VPs started calling sales teams on the phone to ask them about KPIs that were flagged. We saw improvements in subsequent monthly performance reviews in most cases.

Comparisons to market trends and competitors also give the organization the ability to see where they are heading relative to the competition, and then take action to scale up in areas with the biggest opportunities.  Point-of-sale activities and compliance can be tracked and leveraged in conversations with distributors or account managers, especially when competitors seem to be out-performing the company in key accounts or periods of the year.

All the dashboards are available on mobile and desktop devices.

Reports that used to require three full-time employees each month can now be automatically generated weekly. Transforming the data into insights through visual analytics has also facilitated person-to-person conversations that increase sales and widen distribution into new opportunities.