Assortment Planning for VP / Director of Merchandising, read from NCR Voyix
Ward ingests POS transactions, item-level sales, tender data from NCR Voyix, runs assortment on it, and delivers the merchandising read daily.
How a VP Merchandising runs assortment off NCR Voyix
Here is assortment planning in plain terms. Ward analyzes sell-through by store cluster to recommend which SKUs to add, drop, or reallocate.
Your category managers are drowning in spreadsheets. Ward writes the finding at the altitude a VP Merchandising works at.
How it runs. Ward clusters stores by demographic, traffic, and sales patterns, then measures SKU performance against cluster benchmarks.
The connection itself. Ward reads NCR transaction data via API or data export. Real-time or batch, depending on your NCR configuration.
The short list
- Store cluster segmentation
- SKU rationalization recommendations
- Whitespace opportunity detection
- Planogram optimization inputs
Chat
Ask anything. Ward routes to the right agent and returns cited answers.
I pulled Store 37’s last 28 days against the chain baseline. Two root causes, both compounding.
| Signal | Finding |
|---|---|
labor_efficiency | Rev/labor-hour −22% vs. cluster, staffing mismatch at 11a–1p peak |
inventory.fresh | Fresh fill 83%, backroom replenishment lag at 2–4p |
promo.lift | BOGO crackers cannibalized Brand Y by 28%, net category +6% |
Recommend: re-baseline Store 37 schedule against true peak, raise replen window to 1p, and review the BOGO before next cycle.
labor_scheduling…
Reporting
Pinned views built from saved data-lake queries. Every number re-derivable from its SQL.
| Model | Horizon | MAPE |
|---|---|---|
holt_winters | 4wk | 4.1% |
arima_sarimax | 13wk | 8.9% |
gbm_demand | 1wk | 2.1% |
bayes_hier | new store | 11.4% |
Sources
Connect external systems to the data lake.
| Name | Type | Last sync |
|---|---|---|
sap_pos_transactions | import | 2m ago |
sap_inventory_shrinkage | import | 2m ago |
sap_labor_scheduling | import | 14m ago |
retail_inventory_weekly | import | 1h ago |
retail_google_ads_daily | import | 1h ago |
retail_meta_ads_daily | import | 1h ago |
retail_ga4_website_daily | import | 1h ago |
Policies
Browse and manage Cedar access policies for your tenant.
| Policy ID | Effect | Resources |
|---|---|---|
merch-read-default | permit | Model::* |
finance-read-shrinkage | permit | Model::"inventory_shrinkage" |
vendor-blocked | forbid | Model::"labor_*" |
region-west-only | permit | Tenant::"acme" |
What Ward has eyes on.
Stock what sells. Cut what doesn't. Ward runs the model continuously rather than on a reporting cycle, which is why a finding lands the morning the pattern starts instead of at the end of the period.
Ward reads NCR rather than replacing it. POS transactions, item-level sales, tender data come across on a read-only connection, get enriched with contextual data, and come back as insight cards. Your POS is untouched.
Why this combination
is its own problem.
Assortment Planning produces a lot of output that is technically correct and operationally useless to merchandising. Ward filters on whether the finding changes a decision a VP Merchandising can actually make.
What the first 90 days
actually look like.
-
01
Week 1: connect
Read-only credentials to NCR Voyix. Ward reads straight from POS transactions, item-level sales, tender data and starts building baselines. First insight cards land inside 48 hours, before baselines are stable, so you can see the shape of the output early.
-
02
Weeks 2 to 3: calibration
Baselines stabilize per store and per category. Ward stops flagging normal variance and starts flagging exceptions. This is the window where the false positive rate drops sharply.
-
03
Weeks 4 to 12: steady state
Ward delivers cards on a daily cycle, each with what caused it and the next step. Volume settles at a level a single person can read over coffee. The measure of success is not how many findings arrive, it is how many get acted on.
How Ward connects to NCR Voyix
Ward integrates with NCR Voyix POS and Aloha for convenience and restaurant retail. Transaction-level data powers daypart analysis and impulse optimization.
Setup: Ward reads NCR transaction data via API or data export. Real-time or batch, depending on your NCR configuration.
Data Ward reads from NCR
Impact metrics with NCR
Data lake enrichment
Ward enriches NCR data with: POS transactions, Weather & events, Loyalty data, Competitor proximity, Demographic data
Your category managers are drowning in spreadsheets.
- ×Promo planning still runs off last year's playbook
- ×Assortment reviews happen quarterly when they should happen daily
- ×Price changes chase the market a week behind it
- ×No visibility into true cannibalization across categories
- ×Vendor negotiations lack real-time sell-through evidence
- ✓Insight cards flag promo cannibalization the day it happens
- ✓Assortment gaps and whitespace opportunities surface automatically
- ✓Price elasticity shifts detected before margin erosion compounds
- ✓Category-level performance cards replace manual spreadsheet reviews
- ✓Vendor scorecards generated from actual fill rate and quality data
Retailers lose an estimated $300B+ annually to suboptimal assortment and promotional decisions. Source: McKinsey & Company
Frequently asked questions
Ward reads NCR transaction data via API or data export. Real-time or batch, depending on your NCR configuration. Data points include: POS transactions, Item-level sales, Tender data, Daypart summaries, Loyalty data.
Your category managers are drowning in spreadsheets. Ward solves this with automated insight cards: Insight cards flag promo cannibalization the day it happens. Assortment gaps and whitespace opportunities surface automatically. Price elasticity shifts detected before margin erosion compounds.
First insight cards arrive within 48 hours of data connection. Ward needs approximately 2 weeks to establish stable baselines for your specific operation.
No. Ward sits on top of your existing stack. It is the proactive intelligence layer that watches your data continuously and delivers insight cards, so your team acts on findings instead of hunting for them.
Related solutions
See what assortment problems Ward catches.
Root causes, not just alerts. See it on your data.
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