PepsiCo is an American multinational food, snack, and beverage corporation headquartered in New York. Since 1965, with the merger of the Pepsi-Cola Company and Frito-Lay, Inc., it is one of the largest manufacturing, marketing, and distribution company of grain-based snack foods, beverages, and other products.

With ever increasing perceived complexity around us, it’s interesting to note that business questions have not changed over the last many decades, only the environment has. Businesses are still looking for answers to, for example:
• How do I grow my profitable customer base?
• Where do I allocate resources the most to maximize ROI?
• How do I gain actionable business and consumer insights to act on swiftly?
Coming to environment, we have never been in such a dynamic world of:
• Fast-changing consumer preferences/choices
• Shortened technology discovery to deployment cycles
• Competition coming from unknown quarters

The key component of what has changed is the data. There’s now tons of data (structured or unstructured)that every organization has or can have access to. In today’s world, where data is the new oil, as an analogy, mining is actually the fourth step in the below five-step process:

• Sourcing and integrating the data, e.g., consumer/retail panel, social media

• Refining the data (usable data forms), e.g., warehouses/stacks
• Making it available/accessible (reporting/visualization), e.g., stakeholder dashboards
• Mining the data for insights (all sorts of triangulation/analysis/modelling),e.g.,market mix
• Finally, getting the most mileage, i.e., efficient processes for acquisition, usage & governance

Suggestive actions basis data behaviour with possible outcomes, in near real-time, is what would get an organization to truly achieve Industry 4.0 maturity and to achieve next level of business efficiency

With evolving technology at the epicentre and as the greatest enabler, it has the key role to play in every step of the above cycle, to ensure that the engine(aka business) runs smoothly and efficiently. In that sense, technology and analytics is bound to be more integrated than ever going forward. Automated or embedded analytics within the technology platforms, be it traditional DW/BI or evolving IoT/AI, are likely to gain traction in line with greater digitization each day.

Speed to action would be of utmost importance to compete well in the market. Suggestive actions basis data behaviour with possible outcomes, in near real-time, is what would get an organization to truly achieve Industry 4.0 maturity and to achieve next level of business efficiency. And on the other end, rich and agile data insights can throw up enough green-field growth opportunities to maintain the long-term competitive edge. Few organizations have already started designing products & solutions basis social media conversations and captured emerging trends.

Having said that, since Analytics’ role is to enable better decision making by helping answer business questions with much confidence and rich insights, it needs to start with data stewardship, co-own solution-build on foundational as well as transformational platforms along with IT, and finally, industrialize and automate all typical business questions through better usage of analytical tools. While above end state cannot be achieved in one shot, it’s best to put this out as a vision with clear roadmap and investments needed to achieve the same - and then start with one/two work-streams that get you there. This would also need cultural/mind-set change as well, which is the hardest part.
All the best!