Frequently Asked Questions about ClarityRetail

What does it do?

ClarityRetail is a on-line forecasting service that uses your sales data and current price and promotion information to provide you with accurate sales forecasts based on a variety of factors such as price, promotion, seasonality, special events and a range of other influences. ClarityRetail uses your historical sales data and current item level price and promotion information to give you highly accurate forecasts of what you can expect to see in upcoming days and weeks.

 

How Much does it Cost?

The costs are based on a monthly per store subscription service. This fee is charged per store per month or annually. There is a reduction in the fee if you purchase 12 months in advance. The monthly fee per store is as low as $12.95 if you are running fewer than 200 stores and $8.95 if you have over 400 stores.

 

Is there an option to Host the ClarityRetail Forecasting Service myself?

Yes!  If you do not feel comfortable with an off-site hosting service and are concerned about ensuring your data is secure, we can provide you with your own instance of the ClarityRetail engine and the professional services required to install and configure it for your environment.  Please contact sales@clarityretail.com for more information.  Send us a quick email and one of our sales associates will get back to you.

 

How accurate are the ClarityRetail forecasts?

Forecast accuracy is highly dependent on the quality of data that you provide us. For example, if you do not send us accurate promotional information related to items that you are running on promotion, then the system will have difficulty giving you a reliable forecast in the future assuming the same promotion occurs again. Also, if your sales data is inaccurate in some way or is somehow corrupted, forecast accuracy will diminish. The most important aspects in terms of data quality revolve around accurate price and promotion information for the items for which you wish to run a forecast.

 

Do I need to buy computing hardware?

No, ClarityRetail runs on a centralized server farm and runs nightly to generate your forecasts which are then conveniently emailed to you in either PDF or HTML formats for quick and easy viewing. You will not need to set up any special server environments or databases to use the ClarityRetail service.

 

How many stores can I run on it?

There is no theoretical limit to the number of stores for which you can run forecasts. ClarityRetail is designed to handle many thousands of stores and has been engineered specifically for that purpose. We continually add hardware to our data centre to support additional customers to ensure you get optimum performance.

 

How do I load my POS Data into the system?

We support two ways to load POS Sales Data into the system. Both ways require you to upload files to our site via FTP. The files we require can be in either XML or ASCII comma-delimited format. All specifications for the files can be located here.

 

How do I load my Item Pricing and Promotional data into the system?

We support two ways to load Item Pricing and Promotional Data into the system. Both ways require you to upload files to our site via FTP. The files we require can be in either XML or ASCII comma-delimited format. All specifications for the files can be located here.

 

How are the Forecast Reports accessed?

While you can access reports on-line, the preferred method of delivery is via email delivered to you. We generate a forecast nightly and produce reports in PDF format for simple viewing using  Adobe Acrobat Reader.

 

How many people in my organization can receive the forecast reports?

This is controlled by you. We have an email notification routing table where you specify who in your organization is to receive the reports. Currently, there is no limit to the number of recipients you can specify.

 

How often are Forecasts generated?

We typically generate forecasts nightly, but if the system detects that no new sales data has been posted, then no forecast will be generated. Forecasts are generated when new information is posted to us in terms of either sales data or price and promotion data.

 

Can ClarityRetail deal with Promotions?

YES! ClarityRetail is designed to deal with a variety of promotion types that you can specify in your data set. This is a core feature of the service. The system will look at previous like promotions as well as a number of other factors in order to estimate sales for a particular promotion. If you are running a new promotion on an item that has not been promoted this way before, the system will look at other promotions that have been run on the item in the past as well as a number of other factors as to how the item is trending and will create a forecast. Forecast accuracy can be expected to be less if the item has not been promoted this way at any point in the past.

 

My Sales Forecasts seem inaccurate, what could be wrong?

Data quality paragraph here.

 

I am having trouble building the files you're asking for, can you help?

ClarityRetail is the most inexpensive consumer demand analytics solution on the market and we expect to keep it that way. As such, our regular subscription fees are so low that we cannot afford to provide any human level interaction without additional service fees. Fortunately, we do have a team of dedicated professionals and consultants that can provide you with any assistance you may require. Should you feel you need assistance in building the files to feed into the ClarityRetail engine or if you just want support from us for one reason or another, we are happy to help by providing you information about our services rates so we can get started.

 

I Already Have a Forecasting Tool - Why Would I Use This?

 

Let's say that you have already made the investment in a forecasting engine from one of the big industry names out there. Perhaps you are paying large sums of money each year to the vendor for services and maintenance and annual licensing fees and want to determine if you are getting value for your money.

In this instance, ClarityRetail provides you with a low cost way to benchmark your existing solution to make sure it is performing at least as well if not better than ClarityRetail. If the performance factor of your existing solution is not an order of magnitude better than ClarityRetail, then you really need to ask yourself if you are getting the value and benefit that justifies the price. If you have already paid the upfront license fees, then you are likely stuck with an expensive solution that hopefully at least equals ClarityRetail in performance and ease-of-use.

ClarityRetail is so inexpensive that you could decide to use it on a permanent basis to benchmark at least a group of your stores against your existing solution providing you with constant feedback on how well your current solution is performing.

Whether you use ClarityRetail to benchmark that big, expensive ERP-based forecasting solution to ensure it is performing to expectations or decide that ClarityRetail is for you, it is our hope that you will derive benefits from using our service.