01 Overview

CTX was created to give PepsiCo a competitive edge in the CPG marketplace by delivering granular, store-level cost insights.

As product portfolios and strategies grew more complex, relying on regional averages was no longer enough. The business needed detailed, connected data to make smarter, faster decisions — and a tool that could surface it without a data analyst in the room.

I moved the concept through stakeholder critique and workshops, validated high-fidelity prototypes with leadership, then supported QA and launch.

02 THE PROBLEM

Regional averages couldn't see the real costs.

Store-level data collection was manual, siloed, and time-consuming — which limited the team's ability to act quickly on cost and performance opportunities. By the time numbers were reconciled, the moment to respond had often passed.

The team needed a coordinated, data-informed approach to drive cost transformation across the full value chain.

Before → After · how decisions got made

Before — regional averages

Costs rolled up to one regional number

Manual, siloed data pullsslow

Outliers hidden inside the average

Opportunities missedreactive

After — store-level CTX

Every store visible individually

Connected, self-serve datafast

Profit drivers surfaced automatically

Act on the outliersproactive

03 My role & responsibilities

User research

Built on inherited research and a defined persona to ground every decision in real user needs.

Information architecture

Structured dense, connected cost data into views a business user could actually navigate.

Prototyping

Iterated wireframes into high-fidelity prototypes to test ideas and align the team fast.

Stakeholder management

Facilitated critiques, workshops, and check-ins to balance business, technical, and user needs.

04 Discovery & concept direction

I picked up early research, one persona — the CTX Power User — and a set of wireframes. From there I iterated the wireframes, ideated potential solutions, and worked with stakeholders to prioritize features, keeping the product feasible, user-centered, and aligned with business goals.

Inherited persona

CTX Power User

A business user who lives in cost & performance data and needs to move from regional summaries to store-level detail — fast, and without an analyst's toolkit.

Key user & stakeholder needs

→See cost & performance at the store level, not just the region.
→Spot the stores driving — or draining — profit at a glance.
→Compare a chosen cohort against the overall business.
→Trust the numbers enough to act without re-checking them.

Process artifact · early wireframes

FIG 01 · wireframe iterations — inherited concept → prioritized direction

05 The solution

End-to-end visibility, at the store level.

Our team built CTX to give end-to-end visibility into costs and performance at the store level. The tool leverages growing datasets and technology to uncover next-gen cost opportunities — focusing on total cost-to-serve and enabling strategic, data-backed decisions. Three capabilities anchored the MVP.

The whole business, two ways

An overarching look at the business with both high-level and granular performance metrics in one place.

Key profit drivers

Surfacing the levers that move margin — and flagging the potential problem areas worth attention first.

Easy comparisons

Compare a selected cohort against the overall business, so context is always one glance away.

From problem to outcome

Problem

Regional averages hid the stores that actually drove cost.

Insight

Users needed to see outliers — not a smoothed-out number.

Design decision

Lead with store-level detail and cohort-vs-business comparison.

Outcome

Faster, more confident cost decisions across the team.

06 Inside the product

ctx.pepsico.internal / overview

FIG 02 · CTX overview — high-level and granular performance metrics in one view

Annotated · a UI decision

ctx.pepsico.internal / e2e-profitability

CTX E2E Profitability Analysis — Walmart cohort, store-level KPIs, quartile view and cohort-vs-national comparison

A C B

AA birds-eye view

High-level KPIs — profit-to-serve, waste, drop size — sit up top so a business user reads the health of the cohort at a glance.

BKey profit drivers

The drivers panel ranks where margin leaks — waste, pricing, product mix — so problem areas surface without reading the whole table.

CComparison is always on

The quartile curve plots cohort against national in one view, so context never requires a second screen.

FIG 03 · E2E Profitability Analysis — Walmart cohort, annotated

ctx.pepsico.internal / quartile-waterfall

CTX quartile waterfall — key drivers of selling-profit differences, recorded walkthrough

FIG 04 · quartile waterfall — surfacing the key drivers of selling-profit differences

ctx.pepsico.internal / quartile-view

CTX profit-to-serve quartiles — cohort comparison view, recorded walkthrough

FIG 05 · profit-to-serve quartiles — cohort across the business

ctx.pepsico.internal / geography

CTX geography view — national profit-to-serve and store-level cost concentrations by region, recorded walkthrough

FIG 06 · geography view — profit-to-serve by region

07 Outcomes

What the MVP moved.

adoption by target users

faster reporting

0/10

overall satisfaction rating

Measured against the prior manual, regional-average baseline. The MVP launched on schedule, saw high adoption, and is currently scaling.