Stop Chasing Numbers: How Smart Retailers Use Power BI to Actually Run Their Business

Many retail business owners believe their workflows are always one step behind their data. They struggle to keep up with the available information and utilize it to their advantage.

Clarion Technologies’ experts had a conversation with Sarah, Founder of a leading beauty products company with four boutiques across the USA. She said, “I spend more time gathering data instead of using it to grow my retail business." The discussion clearly highlighted the complexities related to data collation, analysis, and utilization.

Are you facing similar challenges? Does this problem sound familiar?

Whether you are handling a few online stores or managing multiple orders daily, you must be dealing with the same set of issues. Unable to track high-selling products vs. items with no customer demand, not sure whether to reorder a sought-after product beforehand, and inaccurate evaluation of product promotions based on time invested vs. profit.

However, the most challenging part is to analyze datasets related to these issues. Why? Because they are scattered across multiple spreadsheets, need extraction from various isolated systems, and demand access to emails for quick processing and compilation.

The Biggest Pain Point of Retailers: Weekly Report Generation

Let’s consider an online retail business with ten stores spread across a particular region. The owner has appointed seasoned professionals to manage different aspects of the business and its data. An expert takes care of pulling data related to sales, inventory, and product returns. The store manager exports data from the POS system, inputs it into an MS Excel spreadsheet, and shares it with key stakeholders via email.

On the other hand, a finance specialist pulls the required data for an ERP system, while an operations manager takes care of a certain set of reports. By Thursday, the owner gets all the data to analyze business performance for the last week. But it’s already the middle of the week. What about making decisions for this week?  

This scenario explains the importance of making decisions based on past data but neglects real-time insights.

Disclaimer: Power BI is a Microsoft product.

Unlock Real-Time Data Visualization with Power BI

Yes, you read it right! With Microsoft Power BI, you don’t have to experience such scenarios. You can easily address key challenges that were unable to tackle over the years. 

Imagine a stress-free morning where you can visualize your data related to product sales, returns, and inventory for various locations via a custom Power BI dashboard. You get instant notification about your high-selling products getting out of stock. You easily figure out whether yesterday's promotion made a significant impact or not.

This is not just an imagination. Retail business owners in the USA and worldwide are achieving and even exceeding these goals with the help of Clarion's seasoned Power BI experts.

How Power BI Helps Retailers Think Beyond Numbers

Here’s an overview of the advantages that Microsoft Power BI brings to the table for retail business owners looking to stay ahead of data.

• Inventory Management in Real Time

No need to call each store to know how many products are remaining or out of stock. With Power BI, you can get detailed insights into available and missing stock levels across multiple locations on one dashboard. You just need a basic setup to enable automated data collection from the POS and inventory system. Pre-defined alerts can also be integrated to receive prior intimation about the most demanding product getting out of stock.

• Sales Trends Prediction Beforehand

Gone are the days when retailers had to wait for monthly reports to understand what worked and what didn’t. You can now harness the potential of Power BI to analyze sales trends daily/weekly. You can even filter out and compare products based on different categories, locations, and time periods. This helps identify changes in product preferences and declines in certain trends in real time.

• Product Promotion Impact Analysis

Many retailers come across such issues. They run product promotions with no clarity on their business impact. An effective solution to overcome this problem is by mapping campaign dates to revenue and margin fluctuations using Power BI. This will help you compare promotions that enhanced ROI against the ones that didn’t do well.  

• Returns Analysis Before They Rise

Many retailers find it difficult to track product return data spread across various spreadsheets and reports. However, they can easily identify repetitive patterns before they scale. They can visualize returns based on product type, store, or a specific reason using Power BI. For instance, they can recognize if a particular item is getting returned due to inaccurate images or one store is experiencing high return rates.

Eliminate Data Silos to Accelerate Decision-Making in Retail by 5X with Clarion’s Microsoft Power BI Expertise.

Busting the Myth Around Business Intelligence

You must be thinking that using Power BI dashboards requires a dedicated team of data analysts. You are not the only one considering it to be true. Many retail business owners also believe that business intelligence requires implementing a new, expensive system backed by data professionals.    

Let’s bust this myth once and for all.

Indeed, you need to collaborate with a Microsoft Power BI development partner to build business-centric dashboards. But you don’t need any data analysts for data visualization. Power BI can be easily integrated with your existing POS, ERP, CRM, and other essential systems. It can bring data scattered across these systems to one centralized screen. This screen will showcase data visuals that are easy to understand by your internal/external team.  

In a nutshell, you just need to build a custom dashboard once, and it will automate data gathering, updating, and reporting to its best. No need to work through the week rebuilding the same reports.

Success Story: Reduced Reporting Time by 90% Using Power BI

• The Problem

A renowned US-based online shoe retailer with six stores and a pioneering website approached Clarion with data reporting issues. Their operations manager, Jessica, spent five hours a week just to collate data and build comprehensive reports. The company sought a solution that could reduce this time and help Jessica improve operational and business outcomes.

• Clarion’s Microsoft Power BI Expertise

Here's how Clarion’s Power BI consultants helped the company:

• Automated data gathering from the website and POS system
• End-to-end performance comparison based on stores
• Instant low-stock alerts about top-selling products
• Real-time access to sales data for the marketing team
  
  

• The Result

• Better stock, pricing, and inventory management
• Faster decision-making for product promotions
• Reduced reporting time from 5 hours to 30 minutes

Making Smarter, Accurate, and Faster Decisions is Now Easy

Most retail business owners don’t need a complex data-driven system in place. Instead, they need valuable and actionable insights to identify current scenarios and make appropriate decisions to avoid possible risks.

For example, sometimes you need to take the right steps or make relevant choices quickly and effectively. Additionally, you want your team to stay aligned without sharing spreadsheets throughout the day. That’s where Microsoft Power BI can help. It gives you clear data visualizations without compromising quality for informed decision-making.

Ready to Take Control Over Your Retail Data

If this sounds like a plausible solution that can help you exceed your business goals, Clarion Technologies is here to make it a reality for you. Whether you own a brick-and-mortar store, an online retail chain, or both, our Power BI experts will help you transform your business operations with custom dashboards, advanced data analytics, and precision-based automation.

We can walk you through strategic business intelligence solutions that perfectly resonate with your business requirements and market positioning. No sales pitch - just a real conversation about turning your raw data into measurable business outcomes.

Do you seek dedicated assistance to make faster, smarter decisions with connected Power BI reporting? Partner with us to get started.