Transforming P&G’s Manufacturing and Marketing Decisions
Web Design
UX
Dashboard
Marketing Intelligence Tool - P&G
Transformation of a manual, labor-intensive market analysis process—which involves sifting through reports, manually identifying sales drops, and sifting through market trends—into a seamless, data-driven "Marketing Intelligence tool" that automates trend detection, streamlines insight delivery to leads, and enhances the speed and accuracy of strategic decision-making.
Overview
🌏 Setting the scene
At P&G, sales and marketing teams relied on fragmented reports, market research, and trend data to understand shifts in product performance. Identifying the reason behind a sales drop often meant hours of manual analysis across multiple sources — slowing decision-making and increasing operational inefficiencies.
The challenge wasn’t the lack of data, but the difficulty in turning it into actionable insights quickly.
To address this, designed a Marketing Intelligence platform that could centralize insights, simplify analysis, and enable faster, AI-assisted decision-making for sales and marketing teams.
🧩 Let me Walk Through the Problem
Critical business insights were scattered across sales reports, market research platforms, trend articles, forecasting documents, and performance dashboards. Identifying the root cause behind a sales drop often required hours of manual analysis, cross-referencing multiple sources, and validating whether the information itself could be trusted.
What should have been a quick strategic response became an operational bottleneck — impacting inventory planning, campaign execution, forecasting accuracy, and the ability to react to market changes in real time.
Hours of manual investigation across reports, market research, and trend platforms — delaying strategic action and increasing decision fatigue.
4+
spent validating reports before action
Slow Decision Velocity
Teams spent excessive time manually validating reports and cross-checking market signals before responding to sales fluctuations.
Collaboration Gaps
Insights and discussions remained siloed across teams, slowing strategic alignment and delaying execution.
10K+
data points to be processed across reports
Information Overload
Large volumes of unfiltered data made it difficult to identify the signals that actually required immediate action.
Fragmented Information
Critical business insights were spread across disconnected dashboards, spreadsheets, and external trend platforms.
🧩 From the User’s Perspective
To better understand the operational challenges, we looked at the workflow from the user’s perspective. Jennifer, a Sales Marketing Lead at P&G, often relied on fragmented reports, market trends, and performance dashboards to investigate sudden shifts in product sales — turning what should have been a quick insight into a slow and manual process.
①
Jennifer Wang, Sales Marketing Lead, notices a significant drop in fabric product sales.
②
Jennifer begins her investigation, manually sifting through sales reports, market trends, and performance data to understand the cause.
③
She checks various market trend sites and articles, trying to piece together relevant information.
④
Jennifer struggles to determine which sources are reliable and which might be misleading
⑤
She spends hours researching more articles and cross-referencing data to find a clear explanation for the sales drop.
⑥
Exhausted from her extensive research, Jennifer realizes she needs a more efficient solution to handle data analysis and market insights.
Setting out to solve
🔬 The Secondary Research
To better understand the challenges behind market intelligence and demand forecasting in the FMCG ecosystem, we conducted extensive secondary research across several categories. The goal was to identify the factors influencing product performance and uncover opportunities to simplify decision-making through AI-driven insights.
02
Understanding how enterprise FMCG systems currently function internally.
How do FMCG teams manage forecasting and inventory today
Where do delays occur in the decision-making workflow?
What operational dependencies impact sales & production efficiency?
04
Understanding how sales and marketing leaders think, operate, and make decisions.
What do sales and marketing leaders actually need from a tool?
Why do existing dashboards fail to support quick decision-making?
How can complex business data become easier to interpret & act upon?
06
Exploring the future of predictive intelligence.
How can AI help teams forecast demand and identify market shifts earlier?
What opportunities exist to automate insight generation and analysis?
How can predictive intelligence improve strategic responsiveness across teams?
03
Understanding how competitors and existing platforms approach market intelligence.
How are competitors leveraging market intelligence and predictive systems?
What gaps exist in current analytics and forecasting platforms?
How can P&G differentiate through smarter intelligence systems?
05
Understanding why products and strategies fail in competitive markets.
Why do certain products fail despite strong brand recognition?
How do communication, positioning, and market fit impact product success?
What patterns can be identified from past product and strategy failures?
01
Understanding the external forces shaping FMCG demand and product performance.
What factors influence FMCG demand & performance?
How do trends like inflation and seasonal behaviour affect sales?
Which signals should teams monitor to respond proactively to change?
🛍️ Market Signals
To understand what influences FMCG product demand, I explored the external factors shaping customer behaviour, purchasing patterns, and market fluctuations across regions and categories.
⚙️ Operational Workflows
I studied how FMCG enterprises currently manage forecasting, inventory planning, production, and sales operations to identify where delays and inefficiencies occur within decision-making workflows.
⚒️ Competitive Intelligence
To understand how existing organizations approach market intelligence, I analyzed competitor ecosystems, forecasting tools, and enterprise analytics platforms currently used across the FMCG industry.
Primary Research
🙋🏻♂️ User Research
To better understand the day-to-day challenges faced by sales and marketing teams, we explored how users interacted with existing forecasting tools, reports, and market intelligence systems. The research focused on identifying workflow bottlenecks, decision-making behaviours, information overload, and the expectations users had from a smarter, AI-assisted intelligence platform.
Glimpse of Research
👣 Affinity mapping
After consolidating insights from secondary research, user behaviour analysis, and workflow observations, we synthesized the findings through affinity mapping to identify recurring patterns, operational challenges, and opportunity areas. This helped transform scattered research data into structured themes that guided the overall product direction and intelligence framework.
Need & Expectations
A centralized platform to access market insights, forecasts, and performance data.
Quick visibility into trends impacting product sales and demand.
AI-assisted recommendations for faster and smarter decision-making.
User Pain Points
Time-consuming analysis across fragmented reports and dashboards.
Difficulty identifying reliable and actionable insights quickly.
Delayed strategic response due to manual forecasting workflows.
Current Workarounds
Switching between multiple dashboards and external trend platforms.
Manually cross-referencing reports and validating data sources.
Using spreadsheets and static reports to track market performance.
Tech Constraints
Disconnected enterprise systems limiting unified data visibility.
Lack of real-time forecasting and predictive intelligence capabilities.
Complex legacy workflows slowing operational efficiency and collaboration.
💁🏻♀️ User Persona
To better understand the people, I grouped the research insights into clear, relatable user personas. Each persona represents a key user category. Here, a personas from the Sales lead perspective:
I need a tool that tells me what I need to know in seconds, not hours.
accuracy to manage inventory
Identify market trends
clear insights from market data
data-driven strategies
●●●●●
●●●○○
●●●●○
●●●●○
Pain Points
Difficulty interpreting complex data.
Needs quick data understanding.
Excessive time on data navigation.
Struggles with accurate demand forecasting.
Tools provide too much unfiltered raw data.
Needs
Easy-to-use market intelligence tool.
Clear, actionable insights.
Customizable reports with key metrics.
Real-time updates and accurate forecasts.
Relevant data filtering to prevent overload.
Jennifer Wang
Age
Location
Tech Comfort
Experience
: 38
: Singapore
: Medium-High
: 15 Years
Key Motivators
Don’t just make a sale.
Make a difference
“
Persona - Sales Lead
The Solution
SOLUTION
Introduce an AI-Powered Marketing Intelligence Platform
A centralized intelligence platform designed to help P&G’s sales and marketing teams monitor market trends, analyze product performance, and make faster strategic decisions with confidence. The solution brings forecasting, competitive insights, and AI-assisted recommendations into a single collaborative workspace.
✅ What we can Achieve
By simplifying fragmented workflows and transforming raw business data into actionable intelligence, the platform creates opportunities to improve forecasting accuracy, reduce operational delays, and accelerate enterprise decision-making. The following metrics highlight the potential business impact by:
70%
reduction in manual analysis across reports, dashboards, and external sources
85%
faster identification of market trends and product performance shifts
2–3
hrs/day
saved in forecasting, cross-referencing, and strategic investigation workflows
The Redesign
Here’s how we transformed the experience:
🩻 Wireframe
In wireframe we have done in total of 2 iterations to achieve the output that expected.
🎖️ Top Features
Market Insights
Visual representation of pricing trends, parameter impacts, and comparison of scenarios.
Real-Time Collaboration
Users can change and compare pricing scenarios to explore different outcomes and strategies.
Visionary Gen AI Bot
Incorporates real-time market data, transportation costs, and other relevant factors.
🖼️ The Design - Dashboard
Designed as a single source of truth, the dashboard combines key business metrics, market signals, and AI-driven insights to help teams monitor performance, uncover opportunities, and respond proactively to changing market conditions.
Key Insight Card
AI-generated summary highlighting the most critical performance indicators and forecasted outcomes. This provides decision makers with an immediate understanding of category performance without manually analyzing reports.
Performance Indicators
Key metrics such as sales volume, revenue, and customer growth are displayed alongside trend indicators. Visual cues help users quickly identify positive or negative performance shifts.
AI Insight Cards
AI-generated insights automatically identify patterns, anomalies, and opportunities hidden within large datasets. Each card provides context and reasoning behind the recommendation, helping users make informed decisions faster.
Market Trend Intelligence
External market signals and consumer behaviour trends are continuously monitored and translated into actionable intelligence, enabling teams to anticipate shifts in demand and respond proactively.
Users can share, discuss, and act on insights directly within the platform for quickly move from analysis to execution across teams.
Allows users to select a product category & time horizon for analysis.
Factors such as demand surges, etc., to evaluate how different variables impact forecasted performance.
Localized Intelligence
The platform automatically adapts insights, forecasts, and recommendations based on the selected market and user role. This ensures teams receive region-specific intelligence and relevant business context, making decisions more accurate and localized.
Unified Discovery
Search across trends, reports, insights, and market signals from a single place, reducing the need to navigate multiple dashboards.
Advanced Filters
Users can refine intelligence results using product categories, market factors, time periods, and trusted data sources. This helps narrow down large volumes of information and focus on the signals most relevant to the current business objective.
Chat & Visionary
An AI-powered assistant that helps users explore data through natural conversations. Teams can ask follow-up questions, request deeper analysis, compare regions, or investigate trends without manually building reports, making complex insights more accessible and actionable.
Sales Increase due to Weather Impact
Jun 07 2024
Sales Increase due to Weather Impact
Singapore’s tropical climate boosts detergent sales due to increased washing from high humidity.
We need to highlight Tide’s disinfecting properties more prominently.
9:30
You
Let's analyze the impact further
Andrew
9:30
Agreed, we should consider the data
Sarah
9:30
Let’s Poll on this Insight
9:30
You
Make a Decision: Impact of Weather on Sales
Agree with the Insight
2
Disagree with the Insight
1
Neutral about the Insight
1
View Votes
Message
Insights Collaboration
Sales Increase due to Weather Impact
Jul 07
John: Let's analyze the impact further..
Major Surge in Detergent Demand Due to Market Trends
Jul 07
Natali: Make a Decision: Impact of Weather on Sales
Significant Revenue Growth in Q2 from Promotions
Jul 07
John: Rising awareness about climate change drives demand for sustainable products.
Insight Discussions
Insights can be converted into discussions, reviews, and team polls, helping stakeholders align on recommendations and reach decisions faster with greater transparency.
Collaborative Decision-Making
Teams can discuss AI-generated insights directly within the platform, ensuring decisions are backed by shared context rather than fragmented conversations across emails and messaging tools.
AI Insight Cards
Users can interact with data using natural language, ask follow-up questions, request regional breakdowns, and explore insights in greater depth without manually building reports.
Crafting Experience that feel Effortless to be in
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Copyright @ Portfolio by Ram
Ramakrishnan Santhanam