There are different types of sales data: sell-in (shipments), inventory, and sell-out (retail sales). Shipments is the ultimate measuring stick (your sales), but inventory enables you to understand out of stocks, and actual retail sales enables you to understand the performance of your shopper-facing assortment, pricing, & promotion strategies. You get deeper, more informative information into your customers and products when this is integrated into your sales planning system and presented alongside forecasts.
Platforms like BluePlanner have been able to import retail sales, inventory, and other reference metrics for some time. The challenge is ensuring that the data is properly mapped, prepared, and there is a schedule to get the data into the system. At UpClear, we’ve supported (and still support) uploading of this data through a tool in the interface and automating the process with integration. Both rely on the customer to map, cleanse, and prepare the data.
UpClear, working with partners like Atheon Analytics, has applied AI this challenge. Applying Atheon’s SKUtrak technology, retail sales data and inventory data* is automatically pulled from retailer portals and imported into BluePlanner. This process executes every day without client intervention.
This eliminates manual maintenance and facilitates actual versus forecast reporting, creation of projected (latest estimate) retail sales metrics/reports, inventory reporting, and post promotion analysis all in BluePlanner. These in turn help you understand performance faster, forecast more accurately, identify out-of-stocks/phantom inventory, and optimize promotions.
UpClear works with Atheon to bring best-in-class data science, big data and predictive analytics capabilities to Consumer Goods Manufacturers. Atheon Analytics provides online tools, services and expertise to retailers and their suppliers helping people to explore, discover and understand how their organizations perform through effective use of internal, partner and public domain data.
*For retailers in the scope of the service
