Our world-class solutions provide customers with valuable and actionable insights, but how do we provide these insights? How do we turn our customer's data into a well-oiled analytics machine?

The ability to unleash the true potential of your trade promotions is contingent upon the right data being used, at the right time, and in the best way. Our expert data rescue team become the heroes of this story. They masterfully ensure we can use all available data in the greatest ways possible to create strong actionable insights.

But first, where’s the data?

Collecting relevant data from retailers, market data providers, and various internal sources, as well as taking into consideration the timing and other essential factors is no light task. Whether one data source is providing data daily, weekly, or monthly, another source is doing something different. Then when you get down to the nitty-gritty, each data set might vary as well (for example chain level data vs. store, or daily vs. weekly). There’s no need to even mention the different formats in which the data might be shared. We take away this headache and accumulate the available data from each source as desired. This is where we start to do the heavy lifting for our customers and save them valuable time.

The beginning of a collaboration

After putting together a plan and understanding each of the roles involved in this process (on both our side and the client's side), our team can begin by taking a look at the available data sources.

The cutting-edge A² Trade Promotion solution supports many types of data sources. POS data or Sell-out data is a prerequisite for analyzing chain-level promotion performance. Adding POS data on a daily level, or on a store level unlocks a higher level of analysis.

On top of this, chain promotion data and product master data are both necessary. Adding attribute information on the promotions improves accuracy and provides new reporting opportunities. While not necessary, more data sources can be included which can create the possibility for a more in-depth analysis. Our experts will guide you on what data is needed, as the desired analytics and reporting capabilities determine what data is strictly necessary and which data will take your insights to a whole new level.  

We’re all here, what’s next?

At this stage, our expert team configures an integration platform for combining data to ensure that we can use each specific data file. This is an efficient and routine process for our experts, and in most cases, the data formats are the same for different customers.

Our data processes form two important stepping stones at this stage. First, we begin with setting up historical data to unlock powerful insights and deliver the first valuable insights. Second, we begin setting up the ongoing data transfers, ensuring a smooth continuous use of our solution.

For optimal results, two years of historical sales and promotion data would be used, as that creates the ability to define the baseline sales for all products as well as provide powerful forecasts for different future promotions. When relevant, more than two years of historical data can be used.

After all the raw data has been collected and scripts configured, it’s ready to enter our software. Then the data is set up to load automatically into our analytics engine.

At this stage hyperparameters and settings are configured, and our analytics models are adjusted to match the data. Then, the analytics models can be trained based on the data, and part of our team is ensuring the accuracy and validity of the data and analytics. All the numbers and brand names and various components are also verified at this stage and any necessary corrections are made.

Now it’s time for insights

Now everything is flowing smoothly in A² Trade Promotion, a consolidated multi-user platform, and all the desired users and user permissions have been created and granted access. Trade promotions are being analyzed, baselines calculated, and actionable insights are being served. Profitable growth is on its way.

Our data rescue team consists of people from different departments at Analyse², such as from the data science, data engineering, customer success, and other teams. They are the experts in ensuring that your wealth of data is flowing seamlessly and continuously being used in the best ways possible.

At every step of the way our expert team is working smoothly together to ensure that our customers are receiving high quality insights and gaining the most value out of our world-class solutions. To learn more about the way our teams are working together smoothly, we recently released an article found here. Also, recently published, was an article detailing the implementation process of our solutions.    

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