There are a few logic steps to undertake when you start to analyze your business and your market. If you skip these steps it´s easy that you end up with the wrong conclusions and by doing so you might up taking the wrong strategic decisions for your business.
- Review Category Results.
A Category review is a good starting point to understand the fundamental tactical drivers for the category such as promotions, distribution, assortment, and price. - Understand Core Business Drivers.
Mirror the Category review with a business review. How are you performing versus the category? How are you performing versus competition? These are some of the questions you need to investigate. - Review Other Factors.
Don´t overlook to understand consumer and shopper behavior and how they are influencing your category and business metrics. For example, if a category is in decline it can have to do with fewer shoppers buying from the category or they buy more seldom. - SWOT Analysis.
Once your analysis is done it´s time to determine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to the category and to your business. Use your findings from your analysis. Have in mind that it´s still just observations in a swot. Don´t forget to answer the question “so what” and the “why” to identify the insights to act upon in your strategic plan going forward.
Looking to build your sales analysis toolkit? We have some great intuitive and interactive best practice reports and dashboards uniquely developed for the CPG industry available in Power BI to meet your needs of Faster, Better, Decisions.