What influence does the weather have on the sales of our beverages? And what can we learn from this for our business? This was the question posed by a global beverage company. The management commissioned STAT-UP with an ambitious project. The aim was to develop a standardised method that could be used, among other things, to mitigate weather risks for the company's own business.
STAT-UP received extensive sales data from the customer for the past few years from 13 European countries. We analysed four sales markets in more detail: Spain, the UK, Germany and France. We investigated the question of whether the weather there has an influence on the sales figures of various types of beverage. And if so, how future production figures can be better managed on the basis of the findings.
We used econometric models, which we further developed methodologically. They made the weather sensitivity of sales as a whole and of individual products measurable. We also developed a BI platform that could be seamlessly integrated into the client's systems. It enables corresponding forecasts of customer demand based on historical data.
STAT-UP also developed a dashboard for the customer, with which the results obtained are prepared and visualised in a generally understandable way. This enables the country and product managers on the business side to carry out sophisticated scenario analyses without any programming knowledge: What happens if the summer gets two degrees warmer? What happens if a competitor suddenly reduces the price of its products? If Germany introduces a sugar tax or plastic bottles are banned? Possible adaptation strategies can be simulated in the dashboard so that optimal business decisions can be made proactively.
We implemented the project technically with the help of PowerBI and R as well as Excel and Alteryx.