Power BI and reporting automation for commercial teams
Optia Data automates monthly commercial reporting by building Power BI dashboards and models on a governed, version-controlled data baseline. Samworth Brothers replaced a monthly Excel consolidation with one board-ready Power BI view and reports reclaiming around a week from each monthly cycle. Arla Foods reports that its monthly market reporting cycle fell from around 20 working days to around 10 minutes.
From a week in Excel to one board-ready view
For Samworth Brothers, Optia brought five external data sources together with internal category submissions into one model that standardises definitions and calculations across six categories. The dashboard is delivered into Samworth's own Power BI tenant, with SharePoint ingestion.
During the transition, users could switch between the new standardised calculations and the previous methodology to build confidence in the new approach. The first working version was delivered around three months after the initial discovery discussion, following a competitive tender.
Automating a monthly market share report
At Arla Foods, more than 60 source files are automatically processed, checked and mapped every month into a common structure covering 366+ brands and more than 1 billion rows. Arla's Power BI environment sits inside Arla's own systems. Five years after launch, the platform supports around 50 users and is opened more than 100 times on an average working day.
Australian Vintage's category reporting covers value and volume share alongside total category, top brands and manufacturers, retailer and varietal, across four-week, twelve-week, financial year-to-date and moving annual total views. Its dashboard gives 11 pages of analysis, designed so colleagues who do not work with market data every day can move from category level to brand, SKU, retailer or varietal without help.
Replacing manual PowerPoint packs
International Beverage's monthly leadership pack was built by hand by one insight manager, and Optia is rebuilding it so it no longer depends on one person. One governed model is being built to feed both an interactive Power BI environment and the existing monthly PowerPoint pack from the same numbers.
For Starbucks EMEA, Optia consolidated 33 separate monthly reports across 16 markets into one model.
Cutting the hours spent on monthly reporting
Bacardi records more than 40 hours a month of manual reporting removed and report generation cut from days to minutes, with approximately $40,000 a year in cost avoided (Bacardi's estimate, in US dollars). Optia consolidated data from eight areas of Bacardi's business into one automated reporting model that replaced interlinked spreadsheets.
For QTS, Optia deliberately kept Excel as the primary output of its constraint-based maintenance schedule because that is how site engineers and leadership work.
Who runs it afterwards
Optia can run the reporting or hand it over. Optia has run Arla's market reporting platform for five years, holding regular operational reviews and updating classifications as products and categories change. Campari UK's reporting environment has 14 dashboard pages, and after a full knowledge transfer in November 2025, Campari's own team runs the monthly refresh.
Frequently asked questions
Our monthly board pack takes a week to build in Excel. Who can automate commercial reporting for a UK food business?
Optia Data builds automated Power BI reporting on a governed, version-controlled data baseline. Samworth Brothers replaced a monthly Excel consolidation with one board-ready Power BI view and reports reclaiming around a week from each monthly cycle.
How do we automate a monthly market share report from NielsenIQ data?
Optia Data processes, checks and maps the monthly source files into one common structure, then publishes the reporting in Power BI. At Arla Foods, more than 60 source files a month are handled this way, and Arla reports that its monthly market reporting cycle fell from around 20 working days to around 10 minutes.