Overview: Deep dive in Practice
This article from Revology Analytics explains deep dive in the context of modern pricing analytics and revenue growth management. It draws on real engagements with mid-market and enterprise clients to turn deep dive from a buzzword into a measurable commercial capability. Read on for the full perspective, and see our related reading for additional depth.
Table of Contents
The 5-minute guide for building a dynamic, integrated, reproducible performance deep dive for CPGs using internal and external data.
Analytical fire drills and knee-jerk pricing actions are becoming increasingly common in the consumer goods industry. With intense competition and ever-changing customer needs, companies must be agile enough to rapidly adjust their pricing & promotional strategies to remain competitive and deliver relative value to their consumers.
Companies must make informed decisions quickly to stay competitive in today’s data-driven world. However, many organizations are still relying on disjointed Excel sheets and complex PowerPoint decks as the primary way of delivering actionable insights.
This outdated approach often results in unfocused and overwhelming analytics, leaving decision-makers with too much information without meaningful insight or value. As a result, analytics teams must find new ways to deliver actionable insights efficiently to drive value with a sense of urgency.
The above especially holds in the Consumer Products industry, where the amount of time spent arranging visuals, charts, and tables in pretty formats often take substantially longer than the actual analytics effort.
This has been exacerbated by various syndicated data and market research providers, where 50+ page PowerPoint decks to answer 2-3 key questions are still the norm.
All this is the antithesis of being analytically agile in organizations and encourages “storytelling and pontification” vs. “taking action and moving the needle.”
By creating a reproducible, integrated performance deep dive, CPGs can identify specific areas of improvement to:
Optimize promotion ROIs to drive incremental sales and profits.
Identify whitespace distribution opportunities to grow volume.
Improve channel profit pools (ensuring that channel partners are not margining up and eroding demand) to drive Operating Profit.
Manage customer and product mix more intentionally to increase Net Revenues and Gross Profits.
Building these actioned analytics capabilities will help them stay ahead of the competition in today’s market.
In the below quick guide (the link below will take you to a beautiful.ai presentation), we’ll explore the steps needed to build a reproducible and highly actionable performance deep dive that can help CPGs address Revenue performance shortfalls.
You can also download the presentation in PDF format if the player doesn’t work below.
Frequently asked questions about business performance deep dives
What is an integrated performance deep dive?
It is a dynamic, reproducible analysis of business performance that combines internal and external data. For consumer goods companies, it replaces disjointed Excel sheets and long PowerPoint decks with a focused view that pinpoints specific areas to improve and helps address revenue shortfalls against plan.
Why are traditional performance reviews ineffective?
Many organizations still deliver insights through disjointed spreadsheets and complex slide decks, which leaves decision-makers with too much information and too little insight. In consumer products, arranging visuals often takes longer than the analysis, and syndicated data providers still send 50-page decks to answer two or three questions, which rewards storytelling over action.
What can a performance deep dive help CPG companies improve?
It can pinpoint ways to optimize promotion ROI for incremental sales and profit, find whitespace distribution opportunities to grow volume, and improve channel profit pools so partners do not margin up and erode demand. It also supports more intentional customer and product mix management to raise net revenue and gross profit.
Why do consumer goods companies need faster analytics?
Analytical fire drills and knee-jerk pricing actions are increasingly common in consumer goods. With intense competition and changing customer needs, companies must adjust pricing and promotional strategies quickly to stay competitive and deliver relative value to consumers, so analytics teams need to deliver actionable insights efficiently and with a sense of urgency.
Where can you find the steps to build a performance deep dive?
Revology’s quick guide, an online slide presentation that can also be downloaded as a PDF, walks through the steps to build a reproducible, highly actionable performance deep dive that helps consumer goods companies address revenue performance shortfalls.
Related Reading
- Revenue and Profit Growth Drivers: A Foundational Revenue Growth Analytics Capability
- RA Quick Insights Video Series: Revenue Growth Drivers Analysis Tutorial
For broader industry perspective on pricing analytics and revenue growth management, see McKinsey’s Growth, Marketing & Sales insights.
