March 23, 2023
Kyle Volenik

The power of daily data

When it comes to choosing the best data solution for their brands, more CPGs are turning to daily data for quick, actionable insights into their retail performance. Here, Crisp Sr. Account Executive for Enterprise Partnerships Kyle Volenik (formerly of SPINS) outlines how companies are leveraging Crisp’s daily data to eliminate out-of-stocks, understand sales performance, and optimize trade spend like never before.

What is daily data (and why does it matter)?

In today’s retail environment, there’s less room for error than ever: brands are facing increased competition at the shelf, feeling the squeeze from inflation, facing ongoing supply chain challenges, and more. Every day, CPGs have to make operational and merchandising decisions that affect their bottom line – and too often, those decisions are based on outdated data.

But here’s the good news: most retailers are sharing sales and inventory data on a daily basis that can be used to guide decision-making. This data is usually updated on retailer and distributor portals, and provides near real-time insights for movement and sales of a supplier’s products at the store level – that is, if you’re able to regularly and quickly extract and analyze that data.

Crisp ingests and harmonizes these daily data feeds for brands, presenting their information in native Crisp dashboards or through to cloud and BI platforms with partnered outbound integrations. Now, CPGs of all sizes – from emerging and trending brands up to multi-billion dollar organizations –  are leveraging the platform and empowering their teams with daily store-level-data (SLD) to make faster, smarter, and better decisions across their supply chain.

Why syndicated data just isn’t enough

The fact that brands can now access their daily retail data – similar to the reports that are available on direct-to-consumer channels online – is a game changer. I spent years using syndicated data, and I can tell you first hand that the daily data available through Crisp is a necessary addition to the usual syndicated data options – which have long been a source of truth for brands. 

For starters, syndicated data reports by retail intelligence companies like Nielsen IQ, Circana (formerly known as IRI), and SPINS can be used to uncover useful category and channel insights. Syndicated data can be used to position oneself in the market, identify consumer shopping trends, and create informed go-to-market strategies.

The information these companies provide can be broken down into three tiers of information:

Channel data Channel data envelops sales data for comparative purposes and to track macro trends in channels including: mass, drug, convenience, speciality/natural and more. With channel data, a brand can measure how they perform across different channels to identify their strong points and areas of opportunity. 

Category data – Category data consists of sales data at the category level (ex. yogurt, laundry detergent), and stacks the performance of brands and products within the space. Brands use category data to track sales trends and position themselves among competitors. They can leverage the data for marketing purposes, and to make claims about their place in the category; for example “#1 best selling brand of laundry detergent.” 

Store-level-data (SLD) Syndicated store-level-data is unique to brands, and contains their sales data – by SKU and individual store location – within a set timeframe. It is highly detailed and valuable information, but it can take an estimated 4-6 weeks for the retail analytics companies to prepare the reports. By the time syndicated store-level-data reaches suppliers, they will have already needed to make key business decisions that the data could have supported.

Like syndicated data products, Crisp also offers store-level-data, with an important difference: the data is available as soon as retailers update their portals

Crisp ingests a brand’s sales and distribution data from these different retail portals via API, and normalizes the data, offering a picture-perfect view of business every day. These data reports offer a custom, near real-time snapshot of sales and inventory levels for a brand, and provide teams across the business with timely, actionable sales insights to make better, faster decisions every day. 

The fact that brands can now access their daily retail data – similar to the reports that are available on direct-to-consumer channels online – is a game changer. I spent years using syndicated data, and I can tell you first hand that the daily data available through Crisp is a necessary addition to the usual syndicated data options – which have long been a source of truth for brands. 

Kyle Volenik, The power of daily data

I’ll conclude this section with a note that I am an avid Formula 1 racing fan. As such, I am inclined to make a comparison here:

You can think of syndicated data as the data that equips the team in pit row. It gives the executive team and leadership the oversight of the track, and the competition. It’s where the driver (the brand) is equipped with insights that give them a boost, and fuel the race. It is useful after a few laps around the track.

Daily store-level-data is like the feed of information in and around the car as it is racing. It signals the driver to turn, slow down, stop or accelerate. Without readily available SLD, brands have difficulty driving efficient day-to-day operations. 

And besides, why do you think they call it sales velocity?

Why daily data matters for CPGs of all sizes

CPG companies of all sizes are benefiting from daily data reports made available on the Crisp platform. Here are a few examples:

Emerging brands

Crisp helps hundreds of independent CPG brands with oversight of their valuable inventory, and equips them with reports to win over retailers, expand distribution and understand their unique sales story. While this data is essential for brands emerging into the retail channel, organizations with a few more years in the market similarly benefit from the product when business plateaus. 

Emerging and mid-size CPG companies use daily data for more immediate insights pertaining to trade spend, new product launches, and tracking new points of distribution. If a brand launches direct-to-consumer before they enter brick-and-mortar, they will be accustomed to fast, daily analytics of how their digital ad spend is being spent and reaching audiences – down to a single click. As a new or smaller-sized company, every marketing dollar counts and it will prove challenging to give up some of this visibility when moving into retail. Syndicated data packages will only provide some indication of performance 4-6 weeks later – which is too late to take action

Whereas larger, seasoned CPG organizations are able to wait and assess their performance, emerging companies don’t have the time. Emerging needs to know today what yesterday did for them.

Enterprise brands 

While daily data helps smaller companies solve problems or fight fires, daily data helps large companies be proactive – increasing margins and reducing waste ahead of sizable repercussions.

Enterprise CPG organizations maintain very robust, steady advertising budgets, as seen in television commercials and other national activations. For these companies, the syndicated data reports that are released every 4-6 weeks are sufficient for analyzing their advertising spend, and besides they usually have agency teams managing this part of their business. 

The revolutionary impact of daily SLD for enterprise is in inventory management. Enterprise CPG organizations are saving hundreds of thousands of dollars across multiple brands and points of distribution by using timely Crisp data to solve for voids and out-of-stocks. Daily data is used to optimize business processes like never before.

Crisp’s recent conversation with Sanofi Healthcare provides prime insights about how the organization is using Crisp data to make informed decisions, and save time and money across teams. 

Whereas larger, seasoned CPG organizations are able to wait and assess their performance, emerging companies don’t have the time. Emerging needs to know today what yesterday did for them.

Kyle Volenik, The power of daily data

Top ways to use daily data

Here, we will dive into specifics about how daily data is being used to achieve massive ROI across teams in CPG companies of all sizes – in ways that syndicated data packages can’t.

Voids, out-of-stocks and distribution issues Crisp’s proprietary voids report analyzes multiple variables using machine learning, to detect costly voids across store locations. The voids are identified using the daily data provided by retailers in their portals. 75% of all Crisp customers are using the voids report to keep products selling – including Sunbutter, who saved $250,000 solving retail voids with this data in less than a year.

Furthermore, the timely data provides near real-time insights about where brands are experiencing out-of-stocks, and provides a clearer picture of how product is moving through DCs and retail locations as a whole. 

Imagine that without daily store-level-data, brands are unable to have a pulse on where their valuable inventory is moving and ending up, leaving many business decisions to pure speculation.

Sales force efficiency Suppliers are maintaining stronger relationships with their customers (retail buyers and category managers) by using the daily flow of Crisp data to illustrate sales performance, identify areas of opportunity and demonstrate their strengths within a category. With Crisp, sales teams are able to save reports for easy access, and even send them to customers using a share function. 

Crisp saves sales team members 16+ hours a week on manual reporting by providing a clean and compelling live feed of data from all retail and distribution portals. 

Trade spend optimization With the world moving faster, and consumers keeping a closer eye on their household budgets, trade spend and its applications in retail media can prove to be a driving force for consumer engagement online and in-stores. 

Daily store-level-data empowers manufacturers to ensure the trade spend initiatives they have invested in generates a healthy ROI. 

Daily data can be used to track SKU performance at the store-level during campaigns and new product launches, providing clearer oversight of these costly initiatives. It helps that Crisp can also track product inventory, so brands only need to spend marketing dollars where they have product in stock – especially when considering the staggering cost of ineffective trade spend. 

Without daily data at their fingertips, brands are relying on delayed syndicated data. This data can be powerful for category and trend insights, and competitive analysis. But the lag on these data sets does not allow for a quick assessment of campaign performance. 

Investing in daily SLD allows brands to understand how campaigns are performing – starting the day they are launched. Daily SLD also allows brands to understand what is not working, giving the signal to stop the spend immediately – increasing marketing optimization and mitigating wasteful campaign spending. 

What makes Crisp different?

Over the last few years, Crisp has emerged as one of the most prominent providers of daily data for CPG brands. It helps that the organization has forged strong relationships with retail partners to access this data and feed it into the platform, making it a highly reliable solution.

It is a deeply integrated platform with secure connections to 40+ retailers and distributors, and features outbound integrations to top BI and cloud platforms such as Snowflake, Google Cloud, Power BI, Excel and more. Crisp data is ready when and where you need it.

Before daily store-level-data, syndicated data was more heavily relied on and used to assess retail performance, and conduct sales analyses – every 4-6 weeks. Daily data is revolutionizing the ways that CPG organizations enable teams to make better, more informed decisions every day. The applications span supply chain operations, sales, marketing, and data departments.

It is safe to say, no other platform brings clarity to the supply chain with daily data like Crisp does. Hundreds of brands are using the platform to inform their day-to-day business operations – with more joining every day. It is becoming the must-have platform to inform sales decisions and manage inventory, for CPGs of all sizes.

To read more about how Crisp is helping companies to-date, read our customer-endorsed case studies here.

Kyle Volenik has spent the last 15 years working with manufacturers on their marketing initiatives and projects, as well as enhancing their data capabilities with his experience at SPINS. To connect with Kyle and dive into a daily data solution for your company, feel free to send him an email at kyle.volenik@gocrisp.com.

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