Challenge:
Before Domo, iPro was only able to share spreadsheet-based reporting intermittently.

Solution:
iPro uses Domo Everywhere to share customized dashboards with its customers that are updated in near real-time.

Impact:
By using Domo to delivery business analytics, users experience positive ROI with the iPro platform within the first three months of use.

iPro puts big analytics into the hands of independent grocers with Domo.

To help independent grocery stores compete against larger grocery chains, Alliance Retail Group enables retailers across the country to band together and negotiate the lowest cost of goods possible. As the data and analytics arm of the company, iPro Systems provides the insights retailers require to understand what is happening in their stores and where they should focus their attention.

“As a starting point, our software enables execution of scan-based promotions by cleansing and normalizing extracted transaction logs into timely billing and adjudication data,” said Megan Cappel, Director of Data and Analytics at iPro Systems.

Sharing insights at scale.

Before Domo, iPro’s focus was rooted in billing and adjudication. Sharing business insights with retailers and vendors was desired and attempted, but proved to be a challenge due to data complexity that soaked up a significant amount of the analytics team’s time and could only deliver limited spreadsheet-based reporting intermittently.  

“You’d be surprised at how little time our retailers have to assess their business and until now, the lack of simplified and fully representative data sources both our retailers and vendors have had to manage their business in a meaningful way,” Cappel said.  

Thanks to Domo, retailers can now access this data in visual, easy-to-understand dashboards that are updated nightly. Not only do these dashboards provide updates into sales data, shipment data, and other data sources, but they create additional derivative data that creates valuable new insights to help retailers and vendors alike drive their business.

“Because it’s automated, it also frees our team to focus on providing future enhancements and reporting additions instead of just trying to get the basics out the door.” 

Using Domo Everywhere, iPro gives each user access to its own metrics based on more than a dozen data sources. Personalized Data Permissions ensure that each user sees only the data that is pertinent to them without requiring iPro to create or manage separate dashboards. Users can identify specific vendors, brands, divisions, departments, categories, subcategories or individual UPCs that impact business so they can take action.  

“The beauty of this platform is that users can take this very messy data picture and very quickly pare it down to key areas that need their focus to course-correct lagging business results,” Cappel said.  

In addition to using these insights to understand business drivers, users can conduct year over year consumption analysis by item, as well as sophisticated price point analysis to better identify the impact that pricing strategy and volume changes will have on their future performance. Retailers can also use data aggregated from other stores in the network to compare themselves against peer benchmarks and critical void opportunities. 

“Domo lets our customers focus their time and resources on going after the largest, most incremental opportunities,” Cappel said. “On average, our users experience ROI on our platform within the first three months of subscribing to it.”  

Relentless improvement.

To help their retailers and vendors get the most out of the dashboards iPro delivers through Domo Everywhere, Cappel leads regular training sessions designed to maximize time to value. Not only does this help users better understand how to leverage their data, but it provides iPro with valuable insights into how they can add more value through future product enhancements.  

“When people think about analytics, they can sometimes be very intimidated, but they’re always pleasantly surprised when they get into the platform and see how intuitive and easy it is to use,” Cappel said. “You don’t have to have a Ph.D. in data science to pull anything in our platform. Domo delivers sophisticated, yet simplified visuals that bring the ‘Aha!’ to the forefront very quickly.” 

Once users are trained, their teams are able to quickly navigate dashboards to inform their business strategies. Reports are exportable in Excel or CSV form and can also be easily generated as PowerPoints or a PDF, allowing users to quickly conduct detailed, tailored presentations with others.