You know this better than most: staying ahead and winning at retail requires more than just a great product. It demands a deep understanding of the market and competitive dynamics to bridge the gap between POS data and reality in stores — including pricing, product positioning on shelf, assortment, promotion, and shopper marketing activities. This is where Retail Pipelines comes in.
The category based, AI enhanced data platform offers CPG professionals a comprehensive solution to navigate planogram setup, tricky buyer meetings, and make the best decisions possible. We like to call it a “store walk on steroids'' around here, but the features that build the technology allow you to do so much more. Field Agent photos with Shelfgram AI integration? We can’t name a better duo.
Today we’re diving into popular use cases that companies use Retail Pipelines to successfully measure data, track trends, and make impactful improvements.
Solving for Usable Data
One cornerstone of Retail Pipelines is its ability to leverage syndicated, brand and category mapped data across major retail channels and retailers. No surprise to you, but timely and accurate data sets are essential for category management, sales, and brand managers to make informed decisions and stay ahead of trends. With Retail Pipelines, companies gain access to a wealth of current and historical data, providing valuable insights into:
- Performance of brand initiatives in-store
- Competitor activities
- Emerging trends
Imagine your sales team is preparing for a buyer meeting with Walmart. Field Agent co-founder Henry Ho always says, “The best way to show up to a gathering is with a gift, and what better gift to give in the buyer meeting than ground truth visibility to what is really going on in their own or competitor’s stores.”
Armed with Retail Pipelines, everyone in the room (or on the call) can gain visibility to rich store level data to discover actionable insights specific to your category and subcategory. From monitoring shelf execution with Artificial Intelligence and planogram compliance to analyzing regional price trends, teams using the tool can make data-driven recommendations that resonate with retailers and drive sales growth.
Democratizing Data Access and Planogram Management
How many folders, photos, spreadsheets, and documents does your organization use to track trends over time? Our guess is quite a few.
Data can become siloed—especially across multiple teams, multiple sites, and multiple strategies. Change the word “multiple” in that last statement to the word “connected,” by making sure you’re all working towards the same goal by analyzing the same datasets.
What Retail Pipelines does is democratizes data access: making it accessible to all levels, from salespeople to brand managers to buyers. This empowers everyone to make the best decisions possible, based on historical and real-time insights that everyone can see.
Think of needing to track regional price trends for specific Clubs around the country versus your competition. (Coming a bit close to home, anyone?) With Retail Pipelines, you can easily access this information and gain valuable insights into pricing dynamics across different regions. Similarly, sales teams can leverage the platform to:
- Identify growth opportunities
- Track competitor activity
- Visualize shopper experience with planogram-level insights
- Optimize current and future retail strategies
Fortune 50 Use Case
Last quarter, a Fortune 50 beverage company's VP of Category Leadership faced a challenge: a new SKU appeared in Club stores, impacting their market share in Circana. To gain critical market intelligence, they turned to the Retail Pipelines product offered through Field Agent.
Through Retail Pipelines, the VP and his team were able to:
- Quickly gather data on the new SKU, including its placement, pricing, packaging claims, and promotions within Club stores.
- Understand consumer sentiment and purchase behavior towards the new SKU, crucial for assessing its true impact.
- Bolstered with critical insights from Retail Pipelines, the VP could make informed decisions to address the competitive threat and protect their market share in Circana.
Real-World Applications of the Store Walk Tool
Let’s say your issue isn’t where your data is scattered, it’s having enough of it. We work with hundreds of brands each day — allowing us a peek behind the curtain to know that most brands are operating in a data deficit.
To help them gather the best data possible for their needs, we showcase Retail Pipelines most common use-cases.
- Monitoring Shelf Execution: Brand managers can conduct virtual store walks— gaining comprehensive visibility into shelf displays and features through photos submitted by shoppers. This ensures optimal shelf placement and execution, maximizing product impact in-store. Say goodbye to store walks with clipboards, and hello to hundreds of fresh photos every week.
Analyzing Data Over Time: Sales teams can identify emerging trends, anticipate market shifts, and adjust strategies accordingly. With over 30 dashboards that compare trending data from retailers, products, and brands, you can see both a birdseye and ground level view of your category.
User Experience and Tangible Benefits
Retail Pipelines prioritizes user experience with features like:
- Fully-stitched planogram views (visual representation of product placement on shelves)
- Heat maps (identify areas of high and low product concentration)
- Pricing analytics (understand pricing trends and competitor strategies)
- Integrated AI (gather and filter thousands of product photos with just one word, even if it’s miniscule in the picture)
This killer combo of benefits from the intuitive Retail Pipelines platform allows our clients to streamline processes, save time, and enhance efficiency for all CPG professionals.
Transform the Way You Collect, Distribute, and Utilize Your Product Data
Provide practical tools to your teams that allow them to be connected and empowered.
Whether it's monitoring shelves, analyzing trends, or finding growth opportunities, we’ve seen time and time again how Retail Pipelines has offered a comprehensive approach to CPG brands.
