How customers use Alloy.ai

Users of Alloy.ai range from established household names doing billions of dollars in business a year, like Ferrero and Valvoline, to DTC brands expanding into retail, like billie and Native. So you might wonder what these companies have in common and how they all find value in our data and analytics platform for consumer goods brands.

Instead of wondering, we conducted a survey to collect some data. Feedback came from both customers who had just started using Alloy.ai and those who have happily been using Alloy.ai for over a year. In addition, we received responses from a variety of titles – CXOs to managers and individual contributors – and functional areas, with the largest groups in Sales, Sales Ops and Supply Chain.

One clear theme came through: Alloy.ai removes the hurdles between teams and the insights they need. From high frequency POS data access to cross-channel analysis and pinpointing opportunities, Alloy.ai is a complete solution that helps brands accelerate and expand data-driven decision-making.

Benefits of the Alloy.ai platform

The survey found that, when it came to a user’s day-to-day work, one of the biggest benefits of Alloy.ai was speed. The plaform makes work faster so users can get more done and focus on more strategic analysis and actions. Providing access to data that they weren’t getting before is another major benefit. The daily, store/SKU-level sales and inventory data, presented in an easy-to-use format, greatly expanded the possibilities for insights.

How has Alloy benefited your day-to-day work?

Over 55% of users cited Alloy’s data collection, aggregation and harmonization capabilities as a key need. For any brand looking to stand out to buyers and grow their retail presence, clean, up-to-date data to fuel analysis is a must.

Alloy.ai has also enabled over 40% of customers to do analysis they simply weren’t able to do before. In addition to the data itself, the purpose-built analytics and dashboards elevate teams’ analytical capabilities and unlock new insights. Sales teams then share these insights with retailers to influence decisions and grow the business.

Almost 45% of salespeople use Alloy primarily to share information with retailers or influence retailer decisions, helping them become trusted advisors and strengthen key buyer relationships.
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Another 24% use it primarily to gain insights that they act on directly. For example, they might make order recommendations to retailers, quickly react to a successful promotion and prioritize their time accordingly.

 

Unlocking new analysis and insights

The uses of Alloy.ai are split between 1) functions that teams were performing before, but in a manual, time-consuming way, and 2) tasks that they simply weren’t even able to complete], whether due to lack of data, tools or time.

The first set of uses, for which Alloy.ai replaced existing processes, include:

  • Analyzing sales performance
  • Reviewing performance across retailers/channels
  • Conduct root cause analysis for inventory issues
  • Identifying out-of-stocks and phantom inventory
  • Evaluating the impact of promotions

In these cases, customers choose to replace their prior solution or business process with Alloy.ai because of its scalability, usability and flexibility. On a scale of 1-5, users rated Alloy.ai an average of 4.0 on all three of these dimensions. It reflects our ability to effectively serve a range of customers, regardless of their size, needs or existing analytics sophistication.

Even more exciting is the second set of uses, for which Alloy.ai didn’t replace a process, but enabled new capabilities:

  • Monitoring new product launches
  • Identifying overstocks and excess inventory
  • Monitoring inventory metrics
  • Optimizing the product mix

Both out-of-stocks and overstocks are expensive problems that can cost businesses millions of dollars a year in lost sales and markdowns. But without the ability to closely monitor inventory metrics and pinpoint the root cause, it’s hard to do anything about it.

With Alloy.ai, customers can address inventory issues as soon as they occur. Real-time analytics enable quick fixes to problems before they cost the company more money. On a longer-term basis, Alloy.ai goes a step further in preventing these mistakes from occurring at all. It guides users to insights that can be used to improve inventory management and proactively alerts teams when issues are predicted to occur, based on the near real-time demand signal.

 

What are you missing out on?

We know you have options for conducting your retail analytics, but Alloy.ai customers tend to think we’re something special. Out of all the tools they use at work, almost a quarter of respondents ranked Alloy.ai among the best tools they use.

It’s what’s helped us get (and stay) ranked in the Leaders Quadrant of the G2 Grid for Retail Analytics. Plus, we continue to innovate based on customer feedback, helping us earn praise like, “Alloy is the best, both on the product offered and support.”

Interested in learning how Alloy.ai can help you can quickly sense problems, predict issues your competitors won’t see coming and respond in seconds instead of days? 

Get in touch with us at inquiries@alloy.ai or start a conversation here.

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