Data driven decisions is a holy grail of marketing. We can perfectly measure our digital initiatives: CTR, CPM, PPC — you name it. But what about retail? Сompanies can not be sure their budgets are allocated wisely as qualitative results from outdoor advertising, promoters, merchandising, etc. can be measured only post-facto. Which means you can never say for sure which combination of promotional activities will work better in a specific store, time and weather conditions. Yet, with the rise of artificial intelligence, we decided it is the right time to change the rules in the game.
Oleksii Ivasiuk - Founder & CTO
Sergiy Tretyak - Front-End & Back-End
Oleksii Drozdenko - UX Designer
My task was to design a full-cycle promo management web application from the ground up. A place where all promotional activities will be created, forecasted and evaluated. Working on such complex solutions without access to business insights and historical data is hard. So we decided to partner with Watsons Ukraine — one of the largest retailers in Ukraine with over 450 stores. In the process of our collaboration, we found ourselves engaged with Marketing, Sales, IT and Logistics departments. It became apparent that it wasn’t about creating just an app — we had to change internal processes as well.
In the beginning, we didn’t have any technical specifications. There was just a vision of what doesn’t work and what might work. We went through dozens of discussions, iterations, and concepts before the product was shaped. Eventually, we have shipped an MVP, tested everything on production and redesigned the main working space to satisfy hidden needs. At the moment the app is in private Beta and is planning to hit the market later in 2017. I’m not able to disclose all the details at the moment, but here’s a slight hint of what is behind the curtain:
All promos are operated in a single place which is integrated with internal systems to provide users with a smooth transition.
Adding a new promotional activity is a simple process that doesn’t require much expertise.
Orchestrate the best scenario with highest margins and turnover.
Optimised cross-promotional activities — when several brand managers are involved.
Setup a forecast for entirely new items based on other SKUs and their historical data.
Track all decisions and measure KPIs to evaluate success at reaching target goals.
…more details are soon to be disclosed — stay tuned!
