Summary

• Overwhelming amounts of data and a need for a unified data source often hinder quick decision-making in retail.
• Retail intelligence software breaks silos, providing a single source of truth so retailers can make swift, data-informed decisions.
• Access to data-driven metrics enhances individual and team efficiency, positively influencing speed-to-action, allowing teams to capitalize on opportunities.
• This AI-driven retail technology helps retailers across tasks like trend identification, hindsighting, pricing weekly reviews, and inventory optimization, promoting growth in the dynamic retail landscape.

Introduction

Imagine relying on data-driven facts rather than solely on gut instinct when making decisions in retail. Imagine going to your Monday morning meeting armed with the data behind your merchandising decisions. Imagine being able to access this data quickly. And, imagine having a unified source of truth that everyone in your business can access and pull relevant metrics and insights. 

A Retailer’s Struggle

In today’s retail landscape, there is more data than ever before. However, retailers often lack access to an independent source of truth to make decisions. Or, they have access to excess data, which leads to analysis paralysis due to the overwhelming volume of information. 

This struggle tends to happen across retail organizations and teams because data is siloed, and there is no singular platform in place that aggregates real-time insights across the board. For data to be useful, it must be democratized and available to incorporate into daily decision-making. 

Luckily, retail intelligence software helps bring all of a company’s internal, market, and partner data together in this unified source of truth, so every person on the team can access metrics and quickly and effectively validate their decisions with data. 

Accessing a Single Source of Truth for a Data-Driven Approach

Without a single source of truth, retailers are negatively impacted across: 

1. Speed-to-action
2. Capitalizing on opportunities promptly
3. Making decisions swiftly 

These challenges affect not only the individual, but the entire team and organization. 

Implementing a retail intelligence solution, however, combats these challenges and enables retailers to make more efficient and informed business decisions. Accessing these data-led metrics immediately serves as an argument ender, as the data points to a direct answer. Moreover, when everyone has access to accurate information, there is a higher likelihood that team members make the “right” decision, ultimately resulting in increased revenue for the company.

Outcomes of Validating Decisions With Data in the Retail Industry

AI-powered retail technology helps retailers validate decisions and act quickly and confidently across a variety of daily and weekly tasks. These include: 

1. 1. Trend Identification: Validate design/merchandising/buying decisions across teams and get quick insights into what’s trending or declining across markets. 
   2. Hindsighting & Benchmarking: Use consumable and consistent insights across the whole business to ensure teams speak the same language.
   3. Price Planning: Combine multiple data sources from across the business to enrich price planning processes with customer, profitability, and basket analysis insights.
   4. Weekly Review: Verify weekly sales reports with a complete, combined view of internal data in the context of the market. 
   5. Pricing Adjustments: Align the optimal product to discount in line with the market and hit profit goals.
   6. Inventory Optimization: Identify emerging trends in the market and missing products or colorways to add to the assortment.  

Conclusion

In an increasingly digital world and dynamic retail environment, having access to data-driven insights to make accurate decisions quickly is crucial. Utilizing EDITED’s Retail Intelligence Platform means that retailers have these metrics in one unified dashboard and can effectively validate their decisions with data.  

Discover how EDITED can help your retail team react quickly and capitalize on opportunities to drive growth. Schedule a meeting with us here.