Imagine booting up your laptop in the morning. Daily insights waiting for you, right there on your dashboard. Everything green? You’re good to go. Enjoy that second cup of coffee. Seeing red? Time to start digging into the data and mobilizing teams to fix the issues at hand. Our platform lets you easily pinpoint problem markets, stores, SKUs, etc.
Now, imagine a dashboard that updates every 15 minutes to immediately alert you if and when any of your digital shelf levers have gone awry. Getting “Early Warnings” signals like this can be a game saver and game changer!
“Early Warnings” data gives your brand a leg up on the competition. It helps you pinpoint problems while they’re happening (not days, or even weeks later). It lets you mobilize teams to action quickly to remedy problems — all before lunch.
“Early Warnings” data is now built into our eStoreCheck location-based analytics platform so you never miss a beat.
The importance of having ‘Early Warnings’ data
Why do brands need “Early Warnings” data? How can having data in near real time help drive your business?
A short, but very important answer: Early Warnings data enables you to take action on any red flags or issues that arise — across key commerce levers, e.g., Availability, Pricing & Promotion, Content, etc. — as soon as possible.
By quickly remedying digital shelf issues, you:
#1. Avoid lost sales and market share.
The costly penalty of going out of stock and not knowing
until it's too late
#2. Prevent retailer search algorithms from punishing you; you circumvent dropping in search results, which means your products stay visible.
#3. Fend off competitors looking to conquest your keywords if you go out of stock or are priced too high.
#4. Ward off price-matching and race-to-the-bottom pricing, which impacts profitability and could lead to your product being delisted by retailers (i.e., CRaP on Amazon).
#5. Keep consumers satisfied, because problems on the digital shelf (e.g., out-of-stocks; non-competitive pricing; inaccurate promotions; missing or non-compliant PDP content) translate into a poor shopping experience, which only alienates shoppers. Once a consumer finds a similar product, that’s the first domino to drop on losing your loyal shopper to a competitive brand.
Consider these statistics:
98% of consumers say they’d either buy from a different brand or search other stores or websites if their usual brand is out of stock
(Source: 2022 Harris Poll research commissioned by Google Cloud)
65% of consumers say they have changed to a different brand because of a poor experience with the brand they intended to buy
(Source: Khoros)
5x - 25x how much more brands must invest to acquire new customers vs. retaining existing ones
(Source: Invesp)
Benefits of near-real time ‘Early Warnings’ data?
Brands can now get early warning signals via access to near-real time data that has been built into our eStoreCheck platform, and accessible to brands every 15 minutes. (Note: Data processing progres status updates cease when 100% of the data has been processed.)
In other words, you now have immediate visibility of when:
- You lose or regain availability vs. the last data collection (15 minutes ago)
- Your price increases or decreases vs. the last data collection (15 minutes ago)
'Early Warnings' data in your analytics solution lets you action fast
What this means is that power users can react even faster and make important business decisions based on this near-real time data.
- You can react immediately to unfavorable situations, e.g., new out-of-stocks; price increases not aligned with brand strategy; etc.
- You can more quickly assess recent actions taken, e.g., stock replenishment; or newly implemented strategies, e.g., increasing prices in select regions.
Make ‘Early Warnings’ data part of your location-based analytics checklist
Choosing a Digital Shelf analytics solution provider is a big decision.
Here are a few data-specific questions you should ask if you’re looking for the most effective way to take care of your brand on the Digital Shelf:
🔲 Data granularity. What is the breadth and depth of available data?
You want to be sure your analytics solution provider offers comprehensive data for all your SKUs at store level for every retailer you sell through across all geographic markets.
🔲 Data harvested daily. How often is your data harvested and delivered?
Daily data enables you to find patterns in the data that could easily be masked if your analytics solution only provides data updates on a weekly basis and / or by the time you get your weekly update the problem could be days old (with lost sales for days; dropping search placement; unhappy shoppers; etc.)
🔲 “Early Warnings” data. Can I get more frequent data updates (than daily)?
Our eStoreCheck location-based analytics solution is the first of its kind in the market to provide near-real time data updates — every 15 minutes — until 100% of the daily data is available and processed.
This final criterion — “Early Warnings” data — increasingly is becoming a requirement for brands wanting to get and stay ahead of the competition.
Schedule a demo or reach out to your Account Director today to learn more about our “Early Warnings” data feature.
