ConfectionaryCo enables intelligent decision-making with sales analytics

ConfectionaryCo is an Indian wing of the Luxembourg-based chocolate and confectionary company. Their team consists of 35,000 employees. Together, they enjoy a presence in 170 countries globally. With a turnover of nearly €11 billion, they are the fourth largest manufacturer of chocolate and confectionary products in the world. Their Indian distribution network consists of 1200 distributors and half a million retailers.

For such a vast and diversified market, they wished to enable a proactive decision-making system. However, due to conventional ways of reporting, they could not leverage their entire potential. This affected their operational efficiency.

Lack of smart decision making

The sales directors at ConfectionaryCo faced threats of inaccurate decision-making. This was primarily due to the dependency on conventional data reports. These reports were created manually in Excel sheets and spreadsheets. In the absence of an automated reporting system, these reports were delayed and consisted of tempered data. They were also time-consuming and lacked the ability to provide actionable insights. The sales directors had no access to validated data to make smart decisions. With 500 employees and 1200 distributions, each with their multiple retailers, this created a chaotic experience.

Missed opportunities of forecasting

The delayed sales reports and possibility of data inaccuracy data impacted the ability to forecast. Predicting the behaviour of future sales, market demands, demographics demand segmentation etc. was difficult due to the existing process. For inventory management, there was less data available on the inventory turns and stock freshness. In the absence of a unified system to display significant information, the management at ConfectionaryCo was unable to tap new avenues of revenue generation.

Lack of standardization in data

The sales officers created manual reports, based on their convenience and assumption. This made the reported data lack standardization. This data was of less to no help to the directors. With poorly timed and individually created reports, the collaborative information on the volume of chocolate sold & returned remained hidden. The privacy and security of the excel sheets was prone to be misused. Every data point was visible to every stakeholder. There existed no system to give permissions and accesses to those who made significant decisions.

No overview of roles & performances

At ConfectionaryCo, the sales directors faced challenges with evaluating the workforce activities and performances. With poorly timed reporting, the business performance, employee assessment and other KPIs were affected. The bill cuts, number of productive days, revenue contribution per employee etc. such statistics seemed difficult to be extracted from the manual sales reports. This impacted the decisions related to the prioritization of products, market segments, distributor & retailer performance. The employee incentive, compensation and motivation was also at risk of being affected in the absence of an authentic overview of the business sales.

Workforce aversion towards mobile application

The employees at ConfectionaryCo possessed an operational mobile application but were averted to use it. It recorded the log of their usual activities, retailer, wholesaler and distributor visits, orders, volume of chocolate required vs sold, product returns etc. Still, this data was collected individually; not through the mobile application.

With no built-in facility for location tracking through GPS, retailer- route adherence and real-time analytics, this app demoted performance instead of promoting it. It needed a technology update which would enable a highly productive environment for the employees.

Solution: Web + Mobile Application with Sales Analytics Dashboards using Power BI