Blog
Working in a retail business, there is a lot of data you need to take into consideration. Ample data is, of course, great, as access to this data means your team and overall organization has the information to understand what is going on within your business and make better, data-driven decisions.
However, having this data does not ensure it is being used accurately or that it is actionable for various teams within your organization. How you surface this data and its insights is what matters. It is essential that everyone within your business can get to this data and actually do something with it. To create accessible, usable data, you must:
Once you have all of this information, the question becomes, can someone effectively action the data?
Accessing an API through AI-driven retail intelligence software is one solution to fulfill all of the criteria above to successfully utilize and action your data.
Think about the benefit of having competitive data side by side with your central reporting system in one view. Or, access to competitive data to support detailed pricing analysis conducted by your data science team or competitive assortment data to support range analysis. Depending on how you serve your data, you might be missing a reliable source of competitive data to support overall enterprise data strategies.
Luckily, by integrating your internal data with market data from retail intelligence platforms through a trusted API, you can populate competitive data into your in-house or cloud-hosted databases. Then, you have the ability to visualize it into BI solutions such as Tableau, Looker, PowerBI, Google Data Studio, Microstrategy, or others.
With the integration of market data into your own data lake, you and your teams can access all of your data in one place and fill any internal holes with comprehensive external data. For example, with EDITED’s API, EDITED Data, you can access the data behind the Market Analytics section of the EDITED app in a JSON format by submitting automated requests. Historical and real-time data is included, and requests can be made for any timeframe.
This retail intelligence software API takes your business data, inputs it into EDITED’s proprietary model, transforms it into comprehensible insights, and feeds it back to you so you can confidently take action. With direct access to numerous specific data sets, you are able to plug the API into any system you choose and visualize the data any way you want.
With the option to overlay multiple sources of data, you get a greater understanding of your market and can make even better decisions with multiple sources of data to validate your hypotheses. In addition, an API makes it easier to make decisions based on the full picture of your performance within the market by providing:
By connecting your data, API software allows you to analyze your performance versus the market, optimize your partnerships, enhance discount recommendations, enrich forecasting, align pricing across channels, reduce unnecessary discounting, accurately predict emerging trends, improve margins, increase sales, and more.
There are many ways connected data works to your advantage in a retail environment. Here are a few examples of how you might utilize an API to drive sales, customer centricity, and overall profitability:
Correlation Analysis: See if there’s a correlation between when your key competitors run a promotion and when there is a drop in your sales. Pull key competitor discount data weekly and combine it with internal sales to determine whether customers are cross-shopping at your competitors and decide if you need to match promotional and discount activity.
Custom Categorization: Create custom categorization aligned to your business preferences to analyze market data directly comparable with your own category hierarchy.
Google Trends: Combine internal and market data with Google trends to better understand how trends are positioned in your market and the correlation between rising searches and new-in product, product sell-out rates, etc.
Weather: Combine data with a source of weather data to understand how and when your competitors and the broader market launch, promote, and sell out on seasonal categories (e.g. outerwear, swimwear).
Price Elasticity: Feed API data into an A/B testing solution to experiment with price elasticity. If the average full price of a denim skirt in your competitive set is 7% higher than your own price, determine if you can semi-automate price increase testing and determine elasticity.
Custom Analysis: Retailers like you sometimes have their own definitions for categories or other product fields. The API allows you to build and slice data flexibly in your reporting. You can create additional segmentations of the “jewelry” category that divide products into metal types such as “gold” or “platinum” using your own set of keyword-defined parameters.
The work you have done to pull together all of the data within your organization is crucial for success. The next step is ensuring all of your business users are able to make sense of it. APIs allow retail organizations to bring in all of the data they need from various areas into a single source of truth. With EDITED Data, we can help you connect your data and fill any gaps such as market intelligence needed to give your business the complete picture. Now, you can empower your teams to make well-informed merchandising, buying, and sales decisions and effectively action this data.
Learn how EDITED Data can help your team connect data and chart a course toward more informed, agile, and profitable decision-making here.
EDITED Market™
EDITED Digital™
EDITED Omni™
EDITED Signal™
EDITED Data™
EDITED Messaging™
EDITED Match™
EDITED Overlay™
EDITED Research™
