Saving £150k+ per year through streamlined data collection

Central teams for large Consumer Goods companies (think Coke or Nestlé) often need a global, structured view of their product P&Ls to make strategic pricing decisions. But when every market runs independently, with their own systems, processes, and P&L definitions, there is no singular source of truth.

Acumen's product Radar gives its customers this view, but requires large data refresh projects, where consultants travel to individual markets, spending months collecting data, and transforming it into a format the tool will accept. Our job was to streamline the process, so that any of our users could provide data independently - and we only had 3 months to do it.

Collaborating with Product, I led stakeholder workshops with consultants to map out the entire data entry process. We identified clear pain points around transforming data into the rigid format Radar would accept, but the obvious solutions to this would take too long to implement. I identified a third party platform that could help us, and coded a proof of concept prototype in React, allowing the head of product to get sign off on kickstarting the project.

We shipped the Data Entry wizard, a feature that empowered users to upload data themselves. This reduced the need for consultants to travel, reduced costly errors, and cut weeks off project timelines. That led to a saving £51k+ per project.