Summary

• According to Business of Fashion, retailers who use AI technology are more likely to succeed in 2025.
• The British Retail Consortium also stated that many businesses are responding to the changing retail landscape by investing in more automation. 
• Choosing the right AI-powered retail intelligence solution can be difficult, and picking incorrectly can be costly.
• You can find the right solution by asking potential partners these essential questions about data breadth and depth, tangible use of AI, and adoption methodology.

Introduction

BOF highlights that the retailers who will succeed in 2025 will evolve and use AI technology to do so. 

However, picking the right AI-powered retail intelligence solution for your company can be challenging. 

• There are a multitude of technology vendors, and having another new, shiny tool always available can lead to tool fatigue for your teams. 
• With Artificial Intelligence becoming a buzzword, it can be difficult to decipher who has actually integrated this technology and who is all talk. 
• Choosing the wrong vendor can be costly for your business. 

Here are a few critical questions to ask potential partners when evaluating their capabilities. 

Breadth and Depth of Data

Having access to comprehensive real-time and historical data is critical to making contextualized decisions.  

Questions to ask: 

• Does your data cover all of my operating markets plus any planned expansion markets? 

• How much historical data is available? And, how often is current data updated? 

• How can I track product trends’ or competitors’ emergence or decline by region? 

• How granular is the data? E.g., can I see current price and full price? 

Tangible Use of AI

All retail intelligence solutions are talking about AI capabilities; you want to know how they have realistically integrated it into their offering. 

Questions to ask: 

• Is your categorization normalized? 

• Can I benchmark exact or similar products in my assortment to the market? 

• What is your crawl frequency? 

• How are you utilizing Generative AI?  

Adoption Methodology and Long-Term Partnership

Introducing new tools into your business can be challenging. Make sure you understand the vendors’ methodology to ensure adoption and realizing value. Finding a vendor committed to genuine partnership is key to a successful relationship.  

Questions to ask: 

• How do you support cross-functional collaboration within the platform?

• Do you have a Customer Success Team? If so, do they have industry experience?

• Can you share your roadmap and vision for the future of data analytics in retail?

Conclusion – EDITED’s True Retail Intelligence

Leveraging AI technology is essential for success in today’s competitive retail landscape. By asking the right questions, you can evaluate potential partners and select a solution that aligns with your business needs.

As a leader in the competitive and market intelligence space, having successfully carried out hundreds of implementations with some of the world’s biggest brands, EDITED has clarity on what is critical regarding functional capability and service support.

EDITED’s data coverage, comprehensive AI, and commitment to customer success helps empower retailers to make better, data-driven decisions. 

Set up a time to talk with us and discover how EDITED can help you use retail intelligence to reach your business goals.