A Framework for Development of Retail Data Analytic App for a Supermarket Chain

Abstract

Most of the FMCG brands support retail chains by deputing brand promoters, who interact with customers, help in merchandising, place orders, check product expiry etc. The brand owners employ these promoters and expect them to give valuable feedback on customer preferences, competitor pricing, product requirement, fast moving and slow-moving products and product quality feedback. However, this information is many a times subjective and hence decisions by brands are not data driven. The paper describes the journey of development of Retail Mitra-a retail promoter mobile app. This app enables brand owner to get outlet wise data of individual products through daily entry of stock quantities, receipts, expiry and orders through the cloud-based application. This brings lot of discipline in the promoter’s performance, enabling the area mangers to remotely understand issues at various outlets and resolve the same with the retailer. The development platforms were R Programming and data collation and storage were by MySQL. The creation and access to dashboards, enabled the brand owners to compare outlet wise performance and helped improve sales by over 30% and reduce losses by 24% in 2 months.