Creating Actionable POS Dashboards – Retail Sales & Inventory Reporting

By Jim Lewis, CEO Improved Retail Solutions LLC

People really like dashboards. But until it is actionable or telling them some thing they do not know, they get tedious speedy. A fantastic dashboard ought to offer insights that would usually go unnoticed. An even superior dashboard is just one that delivers a little something that is especially actionable.

Especially actionable implies it have to lead the consumer to an opportunity or liability that can be acted on. In our earth that usually means pointing out items and stores that are marketed out, goods with too a great deal inventory, a shift in sizing or colour, and so on. It is a lot more than just filtering. It have to be smart. For example, it does not have to have to present you goods that are advertising out swiftly if they are marked down.

Digestion

The information presented in a dashboard need to mirror the reader’s purpose. For example, product sales executives frequently want to glance at factors at a significant stage with comparative information and facts (TY v. LY, and many others.). Planners need far more element- one thing that prioritizes problems or opportunities and provides them solutions in 1 or 2 clicks. In common, a nicely-created dashboard need to incorporate a equilibrium of visualizations, effortlessly digestible KPI’s and fast sights of targeted information and facts. It may contain:

• The Condition of the enterprise above distinct time periods. The core KPI’s and comparisons.
• Visualization of stock and gross sales ratios. Should really be drillable into departments, lessons or what ever hierarchy is employed.
• Interactive playing cards. This is the actionable area. Rank the options and liabilities and have a website link to a template or info feed with calculations on it for quick implementation. For instance, for offered out merchandise, click on on the product and get an allocation, pre-calculated by the process.

We’ve Obtained the Electrical power (BI)

There are various very good visualization applications on the current market to construct dashboards. The crucial is obtaining the know-how to know what to set in it, and how to connect and extract information at the different stages necessary. In several scenarios we tailor made design dashboards from scratch mainly because it delivers the top degree of customization. For nearly anything else we use Microsoft’s Power BI. It’s multipurpose and if you have a great expertise of programming in Place of work (VBA) you are going to feel suitable at household.

Info

Irrespective of the platform you pick out, a dashboard is useless devoid of data. We combine POS profits and stock, ideally at retail store amount. For extremely significant knowledge sets, you can compact shop degree knowledge into a summary watch. You can also combine other info sets this sort of as a supplier’s wholesale inventory (from ERP) or tables that contains promotions or seasonality.

For far more information about how ERS can assistance you visualize your organization, speak to us.