Daisy's Artificial Intelligence Powered Promotional Optimization Delivers Results for North Carolina Based Organic Grocer
Toronto, Ontario (PRWEB) July 25, 2017 -- Daisy Intelligence Corporation, an artificial intelligence software-as-a-service company, announced today the release of a case study undertaken by the grocery industry's leading expert in retail innovation, The Center for Advancing Retail & Technology (CART). This study cites how Earth Fare, the North Carolina-based authentic specialty organic and natural foods grocery chain, used Daisy’s A.I. powered promotion optimization solution over the last year to improve their total top line sales by improving their process for deciding which items to promote and how often.
The results, outlined in the case study (“A.I. Powered Promotion Optimization- Brick & Mortar’s answer to leveraging data”) were substantial, with significant implications for any retailer currently battling it out in extremely competitive markets.
“We’re all aware of the talk around A.I., and with regards to this particular case study in the grocery category, what impressed us most was the overwhelmingly positive results, with limited required changes to the end-user’s business,” said Sterling Hawkins, Co-Founder of CART.” The ROI tells us that Daisy Intelligence and A.I. companies like them provide solutions to address the issues that many retailers are struggling with in this highly competitive marketplace.”
According to Gary Saarenvirta, CEO of Daisy Intelligence, “given its importance, retailers have long sought to increase the effectiveness of the weekly ad or promotion, albeit without a great deal of success. However now that we can deploy artificial intelligence (A.I.) to power the gathering of deep insights and recommendations, forward thinking retailers like Earth Fare and others are making headway towards utilizing more math to understand what products to promote, as well as optimize pricing and demand forecasting.”
Background
Earth Fare is the most authentic natural and organic grocery retailer offering its customers the cleanest food assortments available anywhere in North America. The Company currently operates 41 stores in nine states and is currently activating a growth pipeline that will grow store units by over 25% per year. Given the robust competitive landscape, Earth Fare was seeking a significant advantage that would enable the Company’s merchandising team to leverage powerful insights locked within its significant volume of historical sales data. Unlocking these insights has enabled the company to deploy more meaningful promotions through an efficient process. Daisy Intelligence represents the latest generation of promotion optimization solutions using sophisticated reinforcement based artificial intelligence to help retailers identify which products to promote to increasing shoppers’ trip frequency and growing individual basket size while protecting margins. Earth Fare believed that Daisy Intelligence could help them do a better job of selecting what products to promote and the promotional cadence of those products.
Challenge
Not only did Earth Fare’s merchandising and marketing teams have to earmark numerous hours each week in determining which products to promote, the demands for time to drive innovation for new store activations was being challenged as the company began to activate its robust pipeline. Concurrently, grocery deflation presented an additional challenge to overcome with respect to driving appropriate sales and gross margin balance. AI added significant efficiency and predictability to the sales planning process.
Result
Earth Fare’s category managers are using Daisy’s weekly promotional recommendations to improve associated sales growth and guide their decision-making. One year after launching the Daisy Intelligence solution in Earth Fare, the team has, after some trial and practice, settled into a rhythm of using the Daisy Intelligence A.I.- based solution to drive the chain’s promotion planning eight weeks out, while ensuring that human judgment has a role in fine-tuning specific promotions as they get closer, based upon dynamic factors like supply chain issues, and pricing of perishable products.
Scott Little, Earth Fare’s Chief Financial Officer, shared that “without doubt Daisy has driven a ‘meaningful lift’ in basket size and trips without any additional margin cost”. Earth Fare is seeing a solid and substantial trend in year-on-year improvement in sales and transactions as Daisy’s utilization has increased over time.
“Most of our team is finding they are spending less time trying to find the right data and understand it, and more time addressing the more critical elements of their jobs,” Little commented.”
Daisy’s experience across all their retail clients shows that A.I.-driven insights are able to increase total sales by about 3%, and the Earth Fare experience supports the power of optimizing promoted products to drive associated product sales, without increasing promotional cost.
About Daisy Intelligence
Daisy Intelligence is an artificial intelligence software-as-a-service company that analyzes very large quantities of our clients’ transaction and operational data in order to make automated operational decision recommendations which our clients can immediately action to improve their business. Using our proprietary mathematical solutions and the Daisy A.I. based simulation platform, Daisy Intelligence analyzes 100% of the tradeoffs inherent in any complex business question and provides weekly, specific recommendations to help our corporate clients grow total sales, improve margins, reduce fraud and delight customers. http://www.daisyintelligence.com
David Hochman, DJH Marketing Communications, Inc., +1 908.240.8640, [email protected]
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