Driving results through a connected omni-channel retail sales experience

empowered
Realize your Omni-channel vision
with Microsoft Services.

Microsoft Services helps businesses all over the world build the right solutions
to meet their business goals.
We start by creating personas and scenarios to outline
the optimal customer experience.
In Part 1 of this Omnichannel Retail scenario we’ll see how a retailer can use
data insights to build a connected sales experience.

How can an integrated, cross-platform solution
help your corporate staff, team leaders, and
members work as an efficient and cohesive team
to identify and address changing sales trends?
Let’s consider a scenario

Situation Analysis Insight Action Delegation Communication Engagement Conclusion
The players
Dianna
Category Manager
Home Appliances
Contoso Home HQ
Ryan
Data Analyst
BI & Analytics Team
Contoso Home HQ
Rodney
District Team Leader
Contoso Home District
Atlanta
Mayra
Team Member
Contoso Home
Atlanta, Midtown
Connor
Store Manager
Contoso Home
Atlanta Midtown
Data Insights – The Sales Connect Experience Customer Engagement – Increase Wallet Share
The Scenario

Meet Dianna Owens
Category Manager – Contoso Home
Dianna is responsible for providing insights into an entire category of
products such as air conditioners, air purifiers, fans and similar products and
accessories. She communicates with merchandisers to identify issues that
could have an effect on the supply chain and gross profit margins. She uses
Sales Connect, Contoso’s modern sales management dashboard solution, to
be more productive, communicate with her peers, and make sound business
decisions quickly.
Situation Analysis Insight Action Delegation Communication Engagement

As she picks up her coffee, an
alert pops up on Dianna’s phone,
notifying her of a decline in her
category sales at Contoso.
Prompted by the info in the alert,
she sends herself a reminder to
take a deeper look into the
shared inventory data when she
gets in the office.

On arriving at work,
following up on the alert
she received earlier, she
logs into the personalized
Sales Connect dashboard
where she reviews current
topline KPIs and sifts
through the data for signs
of trouble.

She drills into reported sales
data. As she is filtering by
products and comparing
performance over time, she
notices that sales have been
down across the board for
air conditioners, air purifiers,
fans and similar products.
With the seasonal shift into
spring/summer, this is a
problem.

I need to talk to Ryan
about this.
Then it hits her. Because of Sales Connect integration
with Power BI, she should connect with Ryan Glasgow, a
senior analyst. He could compile the data and put it into
a visual format to accelerate insights.

Dianna grabs her tablet
and heads down the hall
to find Ryan. After giving
him context about the
issue, she swipes from
the right side of her
tablet and uses the
Share charm to send
Ryan the information so
he can take a look
himself.
Mail

Meet Ryan Glasgow
Category Analyst – Contoso
Ryan’s responsible for gathering and interpreting business data and providing
detailed analyses on which people like Dianna can act to power Contoso’s
bottom line. As an analyst, he prefers to manipulate data and work in Excel.
Because of the robust data services and integration with data visualization
tools like Power BI found in Sales Connect, he’s able to get the data he needs
in the form he needs it to draw quick, insightful conclusions.

First thing Tuesday
morning, Ryan sits at
his desktop and opens
the email from Dianna
directing him to Sales
Connect.

Eager to develop an
understanding of what’s
happening, he logs into
Sales Connect and starts
working his magic.

With Sales Connect data service menu open on one
screen and Excel on the other, Ryan locates the
information he thinks he needs to help get a better
understanding of the problem.

From there, he chooses an
appropriate feed to import using
Power Query.

Leveraging the PowerPivot
modeling tool, he starts building
his base data model.

Through Power View, he is able to
visualize the data for specific category
sales at Contoso.

When he filters on home personal appliances, he
sees an anomalous decline in air conditioners and a
corresponding rise in heater sales compared to
historical seasonal trends.

As Ryan continues his analysis, he
creates more visualizations allowing
him to dig deeper into the data and
develop potential hypothesis.

Interested in whether or not
weather has been a factor, Ryan
pulls in the meteorological
information he needs to look at
possible correlations

Using Power Map in
Excel, Ryan is able to
overlay historical
weather information
with sales information
to gain more insights.

He creates a video
using Power Map
that helps him
animate the data.

He creates a video
using Power Map that
helps him animate the
data.

Eager to get back to
Dianna, Ryan saves the
live report back to
Sales Connect.

While catching up on email after
work on her tablet, Dianna gets a
notification via Sales Connect that
an analysis is awaiting her.

Once in Sales Connect, she finds Ryan’s report and looks
over it. She begins thinking about what she can do to
reverse this trend.

Within the Power BI report, she reviews category sales
for air conditioning units and heaters.

Drilling in further, the
data highlights a
correlation between
the weather and the
excess inventory of air
conditioners across the
South, as Ryan had
noted.

Using the Q&A tool, Dianna can ask specific questions of
the data to understand sales trends in greater detail.

With the weather app side-by-side on her tablet, she
sees that the adverse weather conditions are expected to
continue for a couple of weeks.
.

After sleeping on it, the big idea comes
to her the next morning.
“Hot or cold, Contoso has got you
covered.”
Dianna conceives a promotion that she
hopes will turn her numbers around:
“Buy select heaters and generators and
receive 15% off select fans and air
conditioners.”

After doing some quick math and analyzing her gross
margin across categories, Dianna figures out how
much she needs to shave off the base price structure
to package a deal with Contoso merchandisers to run
the promotion. Her plan ready to go, she sends it via
Sales Connect to the Merchandising Promotions
Delivery team.

Within seconds, Contoso Merchandising
Promotions Delivery team receives notice of
the report. They arrange a meeting the
following week to discuss the business
situation and Dianna’s proposed plan.
Shortly after that, the relevant departments
begin executing on creative assets, training
materials, and employee engagement, and
soon notice goes out to the pertinent district
offices.

Situation Analysis Insight Action Delegation Communication Conclusion
What has this scenario
shown us?

Using their Sales Connect app on a range of devices, Dianna and
Ryan are able to:
Situation Analysis Insight Action Delegation Communication Conclusion
 Quickly identify sales trends and perform the needed analysis to gain insights.
 Use their insights to drive meaningful outcomes for their organization.
 Communicate and collaborate with ease—and be more productive

Driving results through a connected omni-channel retail sales experience

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Driving results through a connected omni-channel retail sales experience

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