The modern retail customer journey is more complex than ever – and the era of digital transformation has inundated retail and CPG suppliers with data from countless sources. Harnessing this customer data is key to understanding nuanced customer behavior and ensuring supply chain resilience – but access to live, fresh data for effective, timely decision-making remains a constant challenge.
Understanding the challenges CPG and Retail leaders face day in and day out, Incorta hosted a discussion with industry experts from Skechers, Shutterfly, and James Avery. In the discussion we learned how these pros revolutionized their retail data landscape using Incorta – accessing 100% of their data from multiple sources, unleashing instant access for lightning-fast answers from any device, and driving mission-critical decision making with confidence and ease. Watch the full discussion here, or read our key takeaways.
Removing data roadblocks for retailers
Retailers & CPG suppliers run into similar challenges when it comes to their data:
- Understanding Customer Behavior: Analyzing internal and external data sources to understand customer interactions
- Inventory Management & Price Optimization: Adjusting product orders and pricing in a timely way to meet customer trends
- Supply Chain Resilience: Minimizing excess inventory while maintaining flexibility
Unfortunately, data projects meant to solve these challenges are often stymied by lengthy implementation times and time-consuming manual tasks. Data quality and trust are often roadblockers as well – with organizations needing a single source of truth to ensure their daily business decisions are based on accurate, fresh data.
Shutterfly: Flexible reporting for proactive inventory management
“Incorta has revolutionized how we manage our data, particularly with complex metrics like ‘days on hand’ for inventory. This has enabled us to place purchase orders at optimal times and manage our stock levels effectively, which is crucial for our highly seasonal business. The ability for non-technical professionals to handle end-to-end data processes has been a game-changer for us.”
Shutterfly’s Director of Supply Chain Management, Rachel McCutcheon, needed a way to effectively manage their inventory in a highly seasonal business environment. Incorta’s flexibility in handling ERP system data enabled the creation of complex metrics like “days on hand” for inventory management – which was previously difficult to achieve.
This metric helps them manage inventory levels more effectively by considering their highly seasonal business patterns. Using Incorta, they were able to:
- Improve the timing and placement of purchase orders (POs)
- Better manage their stock levels, reducing stockouts and excess inventory
- Increase accessibility for non-technical professionals, enabling end-to-end data handling without deep technical expertise
Skechers: Streamlined data processes for speedy insights
“With Incorta, we were able to streamline our traditional BI processes significantly. What used to take months now takes weeks, allowing us to react much faster to market trends and internal business needs. This speed, coupled with improved data quality and trust, has empowered our teams to make better, data-driven decisions independently.”
Manish Agarwal, VP of Data and Analytics at Skechers, found that traditional BI processes were painfully slow – often taking months to deliver actionable insights. With Incorta, Skechers reduced this timeframe to mere weeks: enhancing their ability to make timely decisions, and empowering their BI and analytics team with more control over data processing and visualization. They’ve now seen:
- Faster insight delivery – slashed from months to weeks
- Increased trust in data among business users
James Avery: Getting the right data to the right people with self-service capabilities
“Incorta has been instrumental in providing a complete data management and analytical solution for us. It has significantly reduced our reliance on the IT team for generating reports, allowing our business users to self-serve their data needs. This capability has led to quicker decision-making processes and better utilization of our data.”
James Avery’s Data Services Integration Manager, Sandeep Vittalam, needed a way to provide critical data to executives at a self-serve level: getting the right data to the right people at the right time was a must. Letting business users self-serve their reporting needs reduced the backlog of IT requests and allowed users to independently generate insights relevant to their department needs. Incorta’s self-serve capabilities led to:
- Reduced dependency on the IT team for data reports
- Quicker, data-driven decision-making processes at every level of the business
Transforming data into timely decisions with access to live, operational data from Incorta
By easily enabling integration of complex, diverse data from multiple ERPs and source systems for a comprehensive view, reducing data delivery times, and enabling self-service, Incorta empowers businesses to become more agile and data-driven. Whether managing inventory, streamlining BI processes, or enhancing executive decision-making, Incorta helps retail organizations stay ahead of the curve in a competitive landscape.For more information, schedule a 1:1 demo today.