A self-serve view of sales, promotion, pricing and distribution

The challenge

Vit Hit competes across several parts of the soft drinks market, spanning mineral water, carbonates and ambient juice drinks. Previous reporting gave the team a high-level view but limited ability to investigate what was driving the numbers.

Was sales growth coming from stronger distribution or better rate of sale? Which retailers were performing best? Was promotional activity generating incremental volume? The information existed, but turning it into answers required more preparation and analysis than the sales team could realistically undertake themselves.

What we changed

Optia created a consistent market model covering three relevant soft drinks categories across three levels of the Great Britain market, tracking five measures: value and unit sales, price, promotional performance and weighted distribution. Three years of weekly history were loaded to provide the context needed to distinguish short-term movements from longer-term trends.

One of the most important additions was the ability to view distribution and promotional performance alongside sales, helping surface whether changes were being driven by wider or narrower distribution, promotional activity, price, or stronger underlying sales performance. The dashboard was designed to be explored rather than simply presented, with filters by retailer, time period, format, brand and market, and Optia trained the team to use it directly.

The results

Vit Hit gained a consistent view of its performance across three categories and three market levels, with sales, promotion, pricing and distribution visible together: three years of comparable weekly history, visibility of distribution alongside sales and promotion, and a self-serve dashboard the sales team could use to investigate its own commercial questions. The monthly refresh became a regular source of insight, giving users a clearer view of what had changed and where further action might be required.