Time-based evaluation
Use only promotions and prices known at the historical forecast date.
RETAIL & COMMERCE / PROVE
Retail and e-commerce
AI discovery and PoC.
Select one category and channel for reporting or weekly forecasting. Can buyers spend less time reconciling information and explain their buying decisions?
Explore the delivery scope ↓OPERATING MODELILLUSTRATIVE
- 01POS, e-commerce & stock
- 02Unify products and orders
- 03Review margin and demand
- 04Decide buying and promotion
Conceptual data-to-operation flow, adapted to the agreed project scope.
THE DECISION TO MAKE
Can buyers spend less time reconciling information and explain their buying decisions?
Select one category and channel for reporting or weekly forecasting.
A PoC should produce evidence for the next investment decision. Business owners, data owners and users agree on normal tasks and exceptions, rather than treating a working screen as proof of value.
INDUSTRY-SPECIFIC TESTS
Include the conditions that matter.
Stockout handling
Compare results with explicit treatment of unavailable periods.
Buyer review
Compare current and proposed orders under lead-time, pack-size and workload constraints.
BASELINE & ACCEPTANCE
Choose measures for the selected topic.
Store and e-commerce analytics
| Candidate measure | Method |
|---|---|
| Reconciliation differences | Explain differences at order level |
| Reporting time | Time to finalize recurring reports |
| Inventory turnover | Agree on period, cost basis and average-stock calculation |
Demand and inventory decision support
| Candidate measure | Method |
|---|---|
| Forecast error | Compare with baseline by category and volume |
| Stockout and excess | Evaluate under equal replenishment assumptions and explicit costs |
| Adjustment burden | Track buyer changes and their reasons |
Set targets from your own baseline. Hold evaluation evidence separate from tuning and fix the assessment period and scope. Record failures, abstentions and untested conditions alongside successes.
GO / REVISE / STOP
A decision to stop is useful evidence.
Prioritize master data if product mapping is weak. Better forecasts do not justify automation when ordering constraints remain unresolved.
Proceed to build
Core criteria pass, with owners, interfaces and remaining issues understood.
Validate further
There is a promising signal but insufficient coverage; define a bounded follow-up.
Choose another approach
Value does not exceed the baseline; compare data cleanup or improvements to existing tools.
A defined engagement and usable deliverables.
The PoC scope defines the workflow, source material, environment, evaluation and prototype/report deliverables. Production development is a separate decision.
- Workflow and data definitions with assumptions
- Reproducible prototype, evaluation and exceptions
- Evidence for implementation, further testing or stopping
QUESTIONS BEFORE YOU START
Questions before starting
Can Shopify and store data be combined?
We assess product identifiers, returns and available fields; CSV exports can be a starting point.
Can sparse items be forecast?
Limited observations make evaluation unstable. Compare category-level forecasts, replenishment rules and buyer judgement.
RELATED FIELD GUIDE
RETAIL & COMMERCE / GUIDE
Before retail demand forecasting: stockouts, returns and promotions
Sales history alone does not make a forecast useful for buying. Distinguish why sales were absent, what was known at prediction time and the constraints of ordering.
Read the guide ↗YOUR OPERATION / OUR STARTING POINT
Start with the work you do today.
Tell us about the workflow, systems and reporting or documents that need attention. We will define a suitable phase, deliverables and assumptions.
Retail and e-commerce — discuss your project How scope and estimates work ↗