- What if you could automatically get daily retail POS data delivered to your dashboard, already cleansed, harmonized, and normalized, so it’s ready for analysis? How would organized, near real-time data help guide strategies for sales, promotions, replenishment, and other significant business decisions?
The Reality is You Can Get Daily POS Data—and the Implications are Tremendous
Most consumer goods manufacturers receive their demand and supply data weekly and sometimes monthly from their retailers. That means the information they’re working with is, at best, an educated guess.
If a promotion takes place for a few days midway through the week, a marketer might attribute the overall lift in weekly sales to that promotion, but they can’t be absolutely sure of its causal effect—and they certainly can’t ascertain exact lift. They might divide the week by seven days and multiply times the promotion dates, or weigh certain days heavier than others, but these calculations remain guesses—they do not capture actual sales numbers. The data may be accurate as a whole, but it is missing the crucial granularity to measure events that take place daily. Very similar circumstances occur when identifying the results of a new product launch.
If a manufacturer is expected to execute sales strategies on a daily basis, shouldn’t they have access to daily sales data? Weekly or monthly data quickly becomes obsolete when manufacturers can see near real-time transactions. With data that’s processed by retail analytics software and delivered to their dashboard every evening, consumer goods brands can make smarter business decisions every day.
Knowing is the Whole Battle: Daily POS Data Helps the Enterprise Win Big
There are myriad reasons why daily data is essential to successfully growing a consumer goods business in any department. Let’s look at some of the top benefits by business area.
Account Management
Account teams are tasked with growing revenue, profits, market share, and a variety of other metrics. Timely data helps them:
Revolutionize Retailer Relationships
Timely, accurate daily data can transform relationships between retailers and consumers alike. Data provided by day, by store, and by SKU gives the account management team coveted granular knowledge to become the go-to expert for their retailers. With a relationship built on trust—because of trustworthy data—a strong retailer-consumer goods team is poised to boost customer loyalty and build both brands together.
Forecast and Plan Better
Backed by daily data, demand planning and promotional forecasts are more accurate since the team doesn’t have to guess at what strategies are working and what are not—or the “why” behind them.
Impact Sales in Near Real Time
Sales information delivered nightly opens a window into the previous day’s sales so teams can make fact-based adjustments in pricing, product selection, assortments, store assignments, inventory, and other sales tactics. They’ll recognize market or consumer behavior shifts as they are happening, identify hidden sales opportunities, pinpoint underperforming or overperforming stores, mitigate upcoming inventory risks, and shape sell-through in near real time.
Succeed at New Product Launches
Teams can pinpoint exactly how a product launch is performing daily and can decide to continue their current strategies or choose a new fact-based course.
Expand Market Share
Daily data gives teams the leverage, knowledge, and confidence to grow within and into new markets and claim more shelf space. Pilot programs measured daily also generate much more robust information on how a full rollout would perform.
Optimize Inventory
Teams can reduce out-of-stocks (OOS) to ensure on-shelf availability. With stale weekly or monthly data, these numbers do not provide helpful direction for effective inventory control.
Maximize ROI
Teams ultimately save time making guesses and cleaning up the messes. With accurate, daily data, they can make more-informed decisions that increase revenue, profit, and market share, ushering in a higher ROI.
Marketing
A manufacturer’s marketing department also reaps tremendous benefits from using daily data. Teams that are responsible for successful product launches, promotions, and campaigns can leverage this information to:
Identify Consumer Needs and Trends and React to Consumer Demand Shifts
Marketing teams that analyze their point-of-sale data on a daily basis can see consumer demand patterns emerge more quickly than they would with weekly or monthly reporting. Daily data gives marketing teams the power to determine consumers’ current needs and map unfolding trends, detecting and responding to demand shifts.
Optimize New Product Launches
Just as account teams can rely on daily data to track a product launch’s success in near real time, marketing teams can also understand what is working and what is not so they can make timely adjustments for a successful launch.
Maximize Trade Promotions
When investing in trade promotions, daily data provides the proof that the promotion is on the right track. It gives teams time to pivot to a more successful strategy.
Measure Promotional Lift by Store and Item
With weekly and monthly data, lift measurements are just a guess. Since promotions can run for days and not weeks, it’s difficult to determine how much lift a promotion achieves without matching daily sales with promotion dates. Timely information solves that equation.
Increase ROI
Marketers can track sales against marketing spend to see and achieve a more accurate ROI.
Supply Chain
With data analytics that reflect current consumer demand, supply chain managers know exactly what’s in stock and in transit every day, so they can manage inventory movement better. Daily data helps supply chain managers to:
Build Better Relationships
Working in lockstep with retailers and account management teams opens a clear line of communication and strengthens relationships.
Improve Inventory Planning: When supply chain managers see daily inventory at the store, chain, or warehouse level, they can plan more precisely.
Excel at Inventory Management and Replenishment
Managers will avoid lost sales due to OOS or lost revenue due to overstocks with markdowns. Along with the account management team, they can guarantee strong on-shelf availability since they’ll have a clearer picture of the supply chain.
Pinpoint Root Causes of Inventory Distortion
Managers can understand the “why” behind the “what” with a daily snapshot of inventory.
Decrease Freight and Carrying Costs
Supply chain teams can optimize inventory and know exactly what they need to ship to minimize freight and carrying costs.
These are just some of the many benefits that enterprises experience when switching to daily data.
Making Daily Data Work for You
Whether the account management team uses daily data to increase sales and revenue, the marketing team leverages it to improve product promotion or launch performance, or the supply chain team relies on it to optimize inventory levels, daily data produces real, quantifiable results. Further, it gives consumer goods manufacturers a measurable edge over the competition since most companies are still relying on weekly and even monthly data to track demand and supply.
Once you’ve seen the definitive power of daily data, it’s hard to imagine using stale information. Why track weekly or monthly numbers when daily is possible? There’s no looking back now.
To see how daily data can transform your business, contact us today.
