Enhancing Decision-making to Support High Growth: Global Consumer Healthcare Company’s Transformative Journey
Success within the constantly evolving consumer healthcare industry is heavily dependent on the ability to assess performance across the value chain as close to real-time as possible. The Consumer Healthcare Company (CHC) we’ve worked with is one of the few pan-European players that can do that. To achieve this, CHC has step-changed their analytics capabilities by focusing on three core pillars:
Tailored decision-making tools (I), a strong data backbone (II), and consistent business enablement (III). Intellishore has been lucky to be a core part of the journey for the past three years.
From Reactive to Proactive Insights (I)
CHC’s approach to analytics was historically focused on ex-factory sales reported after-the-fact. This entailed a limited ability to proactively anticipate channel dynamics and adjust tactics accordingly. Three years ago, CHC decided to change its focus from reactive reporting to tailored decision-making tools and increase investments in analytics to become a frontrunner in the industry.
The initial mission we embarked on was to run designated analytics sprints focusing on understanding the personas making decisions across the value chain. We then started tailoring insights that could support them. This included use cases such as combining sell-in with sell-out data to show market dynamics, increasing profitability and channel insights from 3PL data, and producing specialized tools to, e.g., optimize net working capital.
Establishing a Strong Data Backbone (II)
A core focus in the transition has been to ensure a strong data backbone. While the suite of decision-making tools was expanded, the platform team has consistently worked to ensure that new data sources are ingested in the most robust ways. The main steps included:
- Establishing an end-to-end data platform in Databricks that could secure the technology to support the analytics needs & capabilities
- Building seamless data ingestions from various channels, external providers, and source systems into a CHC-owned Databricks platform
- Harmonizing metrics and KPIs across the sources to ensure consistency and facilitate meaningful comparisons
- Modeling data to enable comparisons across the value chain – e.g., by combining sell-in with sell-out data
Having one source of truth for master data to provide actionable insights into market share across markets, brands, and categories
Case: Daily Insights for Digital Decision-Making (III)
Alongside establishing a solid data backbone, CHC’s Data & Analytics team has been working with the business to enable multiple use cases. A case example is Ecomm Analytics, which combines data from online sales channels, refreshes daily and gives insights into the performance of net sales to the contribution margin at the SKU (stock-keeping unit) level.
This has enabled CHC to obtain a detailed overview of sales performance, advertising expenditures, SKU- and brand profitability, and the comparison of different online sales channels.
And with that level of insight, CHC is now empowered to:
- Instantly understand root causes for growth or decline and adjust SKU-specific tactics on the online channels – e.g., prices and product presentations
- Fine-tune marketing strategies on the fly by identifying and leveraging the most impactful channels through direct performance comparisons
- Deepen understanding of profitability across specific SKUs, brands, channels, or markets and find ways to optimize
Going Further Than Diagnostic Analytics
A part of the Ecomm Analytics solution is a machine learning model that predicts end-of-month performance. This marks a significant leap forward in CHC’s analytical capabilities by moving from diagnostic insights into predictive metrics. Leveraging CHC’s extensive data backbone, these models predict brand and country-level sales at >95% accuracy, which enables the business to anticipate over-/underperformance and adjust tactics earlier.
Currently, the Data & Analytics team is working to enable prescriptive models around price/advertisement spend recommendations that can feed demand curves to the business decision-makers. This should allow CHC to move even further away from competition when it comes to digital enablement.
Turning Data into Strategic Superiority
Over the past three years, CHC has evolved from looking at data and analytics as a ‘project’ to heavily investing in its capabilities. Besides a strong data backbone and tailored decision-making tools, CHC also has a dedicated team with five employees and a Head of Data & Analytics.
In a market where profitability per SKU is key to building sustainable growth, CHC has leveraged its data insights to gain a clear competitive advantage.
At Intellishore, we are honored to have played a key role in supporting CHC throughout this transformative journey.
