Your category managers are drowning in spreadsheets.
Your merchandising team has the data. They don’t have the bandwidth to find what’s buried in it. Ward delivers the findings, with root causes attached. Click any number to see the SQL.
Ranked on GMROI and velocity together, not units alone, so profitable slow movers survive the cut.
gmroi.sku | 412 SKUs below $0.90 GMROI holding $1.8M in working capital |
|---|---|
assortment.gap | 31 SKUs selling in the urban cluster are unstocked in a demographically matched cluster |
Gross lift looked strong. Net of cannibalisation and pull-forward it destroyed value.
promo.gross_lift | Promoted SKU +41% against its own baseline |
|---|---|
promo.net | After category cannibalisation and pull-forward, net contribution −$14K |
Pulled Store 37’s last 28 days against the chain baseline. Two compounding causes.
labor_efficiency | Revenue per labor hour −22%, staffing miss at the 11a–1p peak |
|---|---|
promo.lift | BOGO crackers cannibalised Brand Y −28%, net category only +6% |
Nine SKU-store pairs cross the predicted-zero threshold inside 48 hours. Store 22 produce is the most urgent.
forecast.daily | Lettuce at Store 22: 84 units/day against 38 on hand, zero by 11a Thursday |
|---|---|
supplier.lead | Regional DC lead time 18 hours, no sufficient PO already in transit |
What merchandising finds out
too late.
Your category managers are drowning in spreadsheets.
Promo planning still runs off last year's playbook
Assortment reviews happen quarterly when they should happen daily
Price changes chase the market a week behind it
No visibility into true cannibalization across categories
Vendor negotiations lack real-time sell-through evidence
Source: McKinsey & Company
Insight cards for
merchandising leaders.
- ×Promo planning still runs off last year's playbook
- ×Assortment reviews happen quarterly when they should happen daily
- ×Price changes chase the market a week behind it
- ×No visibility into true cannibalization across categories
- ✓Insight cards flag promo cannibalization the day it happens
- ✓Assortment gaps and whitespace opportunities surface automatically
- ✓Price elasticity shifts detected before margin erosion compounds
- ✓Category-level performance cards replace manual spreadsheet reviews
Insight cards flag promo cannibalization the day it happens
Assortment gaps and whitespace opportunities surface automatically
Price elasticity shifts detected before margin erosion compounds
Category-level performance cards replace manual spreadsheet reviews
Vendor scorecards generated from actual fill rate and quality data
From signature
to running insights.
A live pilot for merchandising leaders hits these milestones on real data, on a fixed-fee schedule.
This is what Ward
delivers to you.
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" |
BOGO on Brand X crackers lifted units 34% but cannibalized Brand Y by 28%. Net category lift: only +6%. Ward recommends a targeted coupon instead.
Read-only credentials, Cedar policy per agent, a full reasoning trail on every number. Your security review is short and your data team is not carrying the risk.
Read the security posture →The blind spots that cost
merchandising leaders the most.
KPIs that erode quietly when nobody’s watching, one from each vertical this role covers.
What Ward covers
for merchandising leaders.
Retail verticals
Insight typesThe first three are where this role usually starts.
Metrics Ward moves
Platform pieces this role leans on
Systems Ward connects toRead-only by default.
Operator stories
and the alternatives.
Two ways to start.
Run a fixed-fee pilot on your data, or talk to advisory about a broader engagement.
Playbooks for Merchandising.
The playbooks this team runs on Ward.
Control AI spend by department and user.
Without skimping on the outcome.
Give every department and every user a compute budget. Ward routes each question to the cheapest model that clears the quality bar, so finance caps the spend without capping what the business gets back.
Your category managers are drowning in spreadsheets.
See what Ward finds for Merchandising leaders, with root causes and recommended actions.
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.