Ditch the Data Dumps

Easy data collection steps for any wholesale professional

It's Monday morning. Your inbox is flooded with weekly retail recaps. Some files labeled the black colorway as navy, some retailers forgot to send data entirely, now Excel is crashing after pasting all last week's sales, and did that one retailer just send season-to-date-date numbers instead of last week’s—

Great, now your boss just messaged needing a sales recap by 9 am.

Sound familiar?

If you suffer from the data dumps, have no fear! The experts at SKYPAD analyze hundreds of retailers' data across 1000s of clients every day. When it comes to data collection for the wholesale industry, here are our secrets to painless data collection:

Manual Method:

1.     If you are going to source, collect, and combine data on your own, first identify:

• How is the retailer providing data today? (Portal, merchant reports, EDIs, etc.)
• Which metrics do the reports provide?
• Are they missing metrics?
• How specific are your brand's product attributes reported? Is there UPC or only Style-Color?
• Do the reports provide door-level information?
• What is the format of the file?

2.     Get consistent and specific reporting from retailers!

Once all components are identified, stress to your retail partners the importance of providing consistent and specific reporting. This will help with combining data later.

3.     Ditch the Data Dumps!

Move over clunky data dumps, and hello Power Query! Power Query is a built-in Excel tool that automatically combines, transforms, and loads data whenever newly consistent formatted files are dropped in a folder.

4.     Match selling to your brand's product hierarchy!

Not all retailers provide product attributes with the same naming convention as your brand. Extract a master list of attributes (UPC, style, color, size, season, delivery, etc.) and match them to the selling reports. Get ready to dust off those VLOOKUP and CONCAT skills!

Pro Method:

• Does the manual method sound...well, manual? At SKYPAD, we take care of:
• Collecting and combining data.
• Translating data to a brand's hierarchy.
• Advocating to receive the best reports from retailers.
• Instantly notifying when retailers forget to send data.
• Storing up to two years of data, that can be exported in a matter of seconds.

Pros and Cons of Each Method:

Reach out to our data experts today to say goodbye to the data dumps!

www.skyitgroup.com | info@skyitgroup.com