Leading the Future of Digital-First Consumer Engagement with AI & Data

01 The Challenge

Turning Data into a Driver of Growth with AI

As one of the world’s largest food and beverage companies, PepsiCo operates across complex global supply chains, with hundreds of brands and SKUs, and a fast-growing digital commerce footprint. With about 20% of its revenue growth coming from e-commerce, the company was under increasing pressure to transform how it managed, measured, and acted on data.

PepsiCo’s marketing, e-commerce, finance, and supply chain teams all relied on a growing volume of diverse operational data – including those from third-party retailers, like Amazon, Walmart and Target, to internal business units – to drive smart decisions, forecast demand, optimize media spend, and improve ROI.

But the data landscape was increasingly complex and fragmented:

• Retailers stored and handled data differently, and internal systems were inconsistent across regions and brands
• Formats varied, and changes were rarely tracked across diverse platforms, systems, and tools
• Data was often received “as is,” unsynchronized, and difficult to audit, process, and manage

These data specifics made any effort of performing advanced analytics, cross-channel attribution, and automation nearly impossible at scale.

This fragmentation was especially visible in marketing. ROI was calculated infrequently, sometimes annually, using incomplete data, outsourced models, and third-party tools. Teams lacked real-time visibility into media performance and could not confidently reallocate budget or optimize campaigns in-flight.

“With spend shifting rapidly toward streaming, retail media, social platforms, and DTC channels, PepsiCo was operating almost blind, without the infrastructure and insight to keep up with the speed and complexity of digital.”

Meanwhile, internal data science and analytics teams faced mounting demands to reduce cost, eliminate agency dependencies, and build scalable, secure, first-party data capabilities across the enterprise. PepsiCo needed a new, robust data foundation – not just to unify disparate data sources, but to unlock the potential of that data through AI/ML and analytics in real time.

PepsiCo’s Data & Analytics department envisioned an enterprise-scale transformation:

“A next-generation, AI- & machine learning-powered data platform that would serve as both a central intelligence layer for enterprise-wide analytics and a marketing ROI engine to support global performance measurement.”

The goal was to democratize data, automate insight generation and delivery, and enable diverse business units to act faster and smarter across all brands, markets, and functions.

To realize this vision, PepsiCo reached out to Provectus, an AWS Premier Consulting Partner. By augmenting its internal teams with cloud, data engineering, and AI/ ML expertise of Provectus, PepsiCo set out to launch a scalable, AWS-native solution for marketing intelligence.

02 The Approach

Building an Always-On Marketing Intelligence Platform

PepsiCo and Provectus joined forces to design and build the ROI Engine – an AI- & machine learning-powered, always-on marketing intelligence platform architected for scale, speed, and global consistency. The project combined Provectus’ expertise in data engineering, cloud architecture, and applied machine learning with PepsiCo’s internal marketing, data, and media operations teams.

Central to the solution was the ability to unify PepsiCo’s disparate sales and marketing data into a centralized, analytics-ready environment. It includes:

• First-party sales and campaign data
• Third-party media performance data
• Second-party inputs from partners like Walmart and Kroger

Overall, the platform was designed to integrate over 200 unique data sources, each with its own schema, cadence, and governance constraints.

From a technology standpoint, Provectus built a cloud-native architecture on AWS, with a modular and scalable data lake at its foundation. Using Apache Airflow, Terraform, and CI/CD pipelines, we ensured that data ingestion, processing, and modeling could be automated, monitored, and updated with minimal friction. This infrastructure enabled PepsiCo’s teams to deploy new data integrations, regional customizations, or campaign logic at speed, without relying on outside vendors.

The AI and machine learning layer of the ROI Engine delivered:

• Multi-touch attribution models
• Campaign-level forecasting
• Predictive insights tailored to each business unit

By grounding measurement in PepsiCo’s diverse first-party data, the platform produced reliable, real-time insights that internal teams could trust, without the black-box limitations of costly, traditional third-party tools provided by vendors.

Provectus also engaged with business stakeholders to develop executive-ready dashboards tailored to various decision-making levels, from brand managers to global media leads. These dashboards provided self-service access to key performance metrics, ROI readouts, budget pacing, and scenario simulations, enabling faster and more informed decisions at every level of the organization.

The platform was rolled out across global markets in phases, with the first release delivered in just three months. Thanks to its scalable design and embedded best practices, the ROI Engine is now operational across 23 brands and over 100+ countries, and continues to expand its capabilities as PepsiCo’s data maturity evolves.

03 The Results

Powering Smarter Media Spend with AI/ML & Data -Powered ROI Engine

The launch of the ROI Engine was a turning point in PepsiCo’s global media operations, enabling the teams to spend smarter, not more.

Where previously ROI was calculated once a year using outdated models and incomplete data, PepsiCo teams now operate with real-time visibility into media performance, campaign impact, and investment efficiency across digital, DTC, and retail media channels. This shift has allowed marketing leaders to:

• Reallocate spend dynamically
• Test new tactics in-flight
• React to market changes as they happen

One of the most immediate benefits was the ability to confidently shift investment away from linear TV and toward high-performing digital and addressable channels, backed by concrete performance benchmarks. PepsiCo can now measure the incremental value of every dollar spent across markets, brands, and formats and use those insights to fuel more efficient planning and execution cycles.

The financial impact was significant:

• Double-digit ROI improvements across brands and campaigns
• Millions of dollars saved annually through smarter, in-flight optimizations
• Tens of millions in cost reduction by eliminating dependence on external agencies and measurement vendors

Beyond media, the ROI Engine became a strategic source of high-quality data. Its insights inform pricing decisions, promotion planning, product launches, and go-to-market strategies across the business. Internal teams and BUs across marketing, finance, supply chain, and analytics use the same data and dashboards to align decisions and drive unified outcomes.

“This is what enabled us to confidently shift investments away from linear TV… ROI Engine has significantly scaled up our addressable mix across every single brand.” — Shyam Venugopal, SVP Global Media & Commercial Capabilities, PepsiCo

Today, as an always-on marketing intelligence platform, the ROI Engine is the center of PepsiCo’s analytics ecosystem – supporting 23 brands in over 100 countries, with ongoing development to add new models, data sources, and business logic. Built on trusted first-party data and scalable AI/ML infrastructure, it empowers PepsiCo to move faster, invest smarter, and compete harder in the digital-first consumer economy.