Looker + Specialty Retail: Built for Head of Procurement
Specialty retailers have 5,000+ SKUs and blind spots hiding in every store. Ward watches them all and delivers the findings your team doesn't have bandwidth to find. Your Looker / Looker Studio data holds answers nobody has time to extract. Ward reads it via read-only APIs.
Ward + Looker for Specialty Retail
Specialty Retail retailers running Looker / Looker Studio get AI insight cards without custom development. High-consideration purchases, curated assortments, and customer lifetime value. Ward tracks the metrics that matter for margin-rich retail.
How it works: Ward can query Looker via API or connect directly to the underlying database. Either way, Ward monitors while your team browses.
Ward monitors 5,000+ SKUs across your boutiques and delivers automated insight cards covering CLV, Conversion rate, Units per transaction, and more.
Chat
Ask anything. Ward routes to the right agent and returns cited answers.
I pulled Store 37’s last 28 days against the chain baseline. Two root causes, both compounding.
| Signal | Finding |
|---|---|
labor_efficiency | Rev/labor-hour −22% vs. cluster, staffing mismatch at 11a–1p peak |
inventory.fresh | Fresh fill 83%, backroom replenishment lag at 2–4p |
promo.lift | BOGO crackers cannibalized Brand Y by 28%, net category +6% |
Recommend: re-baseline Store 37 schedule against true peak, raise replen window to 1p, and review the BOGO before next cycle.
labor_scheduling…
Dashboards
Pinned views built from saved data-lake queries.
Sources
Connect external systems to the data lake.
| Name | Type | Last sync |
|---|---|---|
sap_pos_transactions | import | 2m ago |
sap_inventory_shrinkage | import | 2m ago |
sap_labor_scheduling | import | 14m ago |
retail_inventory_weekly | import | 1h ago |
retail_google_ads_daily | import | 1h ago |
retail_meta_ads_daily | import | 1h ago |
retail_ga4_website_daily | import | 1h ago |
Policies
Browse and manage Cedar access policies for your tenant.
| Policy ID | Effect | Resources |
|---|---|---|
merch-read-default | permit | Model::* |
finance-read-shrinkage | permit | Model::"inventory_shrinkage" |
vendor-blocked | forbid | Model::"labor_*" |
region-west-only | permit | Tenant::"acme" |
What Ward delivers
- MSA, DPA, SOC 2 Type II underway, and architecture review available before signature
- Month-to-month contracts. No multi-year lock-in. No auto-renew traps
- Transparent pricing set by scope and store count
- 14-day insight guarantee. If Ward doesn't deliver, month two is on us
- AI strategy, orchestration and reporting-layer work in enterprise grocery at nine-figure revenue. Reference calls available before signature
Metrics Ward monitors
Specialty challenges Ward solves
- Assortment curation
- Customer lifetime value
- Staff selling effectiveness
- Clienteling optimization
- Inventory depth vs breadth
How Ward connects to Looker / Looker Studio
Ward does not replace Looker. Ward watches the same data Looker visualizes and proactively alerts when something changes. Your dashboards stay. Ward adds intelligence.
Setup: Ward can query Looker via API or connect directly to the underlying database. Either way, Ward monitors while your team browses.
Data Ward reads from Looker
Impact metrics with Looker
Data lake enrichment
Ward enriches Looker data with: Looker query results, Underlying database, Weather & events, Competitor data, Customer segments
Merchandising wants Ward. You sign the contract.
- ×Business sponsor saw the demo. You have a week to vet a vendor you didn't pick
- ×AI vendors price by seats and tokens. Total cost is unknowable until invoice three
- ×Multi-year commits with auto-renew. No exit if the pilot stalls
- ×Renewals come back 30% higher, with no room to push back and no benchmark to cite
- ×Security and DPA reviews start after the team has already committed
- ✓MSA, DPA, SOC 2 Type II underway, and architecture review available before signature
- ✓Month-to-month contracts. No multi-year lock-in. No auto-renew traps
- ✓Transparent pricing set by scope and store count
- ✓14-day insight guarantee. If Ward doesn't deliver, month two is on us
- ✓AI strategy, orchestration and reporting-layer work in enterprise grocery at nine-figure revenue. Reference calls available before signature
Enterprise SaaS spend grew 18% YoY. 53% of subscriptions are underused or duplicative. Source: Gartner
Specialty KPI impact
Frequently asked questions
Ward can query Looker via API or connect directly to the underlying database. Either way, Ward monitors while your team browses. Data points include: Looker API for query results, Underlying database (direct), LookML model metadata.
Yes. Ward reads Looker data and combines it with contextual signals (weather, events, demographics) to generate Specialty-specific insight cards. No custom development required.
Merchandising wants Ward. You sign the contract. Ward solves this with automated insight cards: MSA, DPA, SOC 2 Type II underway, and architecture review available before signature. Month-to-month contracts. No multi-year lock-in. No auto-renew traps. Transparent pricing set by scope and store count.
Ward delivers daily insight cards covering CLV, Conversion rate, Units per transaction, tailored for Procurement decision-making. Each card includes what changed, why it matters, and what to do next.
First insight cards arrive within 48 hours of data connection. Ward needs approximately 2 weeks to establish stable baselines for your specific operation.
No. Ward sits on top of your existing stack. It is the proactive intelligence layer that watches your data continuously and delivers insight cards, so your team acts on findings instead of hunting for them.
Related solutions
See what Specialty problems Ward catches.
Root causes, not just alerts. See it on your data.
Read-only to start · your LLM keys · SOC 2 Type II underway · or book a call directly
Find out what your data has been hiding.
Tell us about your operation. We’ll show you the problems Ward catches, and the ones your current tools miss.