Convenience · Stockout · NCR · Head of LP

Head of LP: convenience stockout, read from NCR Voyix

Shrinkage costs you more than you think. Ward finds out where. Ward flags convenience stockout movement in your NCR data early, with the driver and a recommended move attached.

Stockout Prediction for Convenience on NCR, scoped to loss prevention

Stockout Prediction, in one sentence. Ward detects SKUs trending toward zero-on-hand and alerts your team with replenishment recommendations before customers notice.

A Convenience & C-Store operator is watching 3,000+ SKUs over locations. High-frequency, low-SKU environments where every facing counts. Ward monitors impulse categories and daypart demand patterns around the clock.

Shrinkage costs you more than you think. Ward finds out where. Ward raises the readings that change a loss prevention decision.

How Ward hands back Stockout findings: Ward analyzes sell-through velocity, current inventory levels, lead times, and supplier reliability to predict stockouts 24-72 hours before they occur.

The connection itself. Ward reads NCR transaction data via API or data export. Real-time or batch, depending on your NCR configuration.

What it does

  • Automated replenishment recommendations
  • Supplier-aware lead time modeling
  • Priority ranking by revenue impact
  • Reduce lost sales by catching gaps early
app.getward.ai Live demo
Acme Convenience @Store Ops: Regional Analyst claude-sonnet default
A

Chat

Ask anything. Ward routes to the right agent and returns cited answers.

Why is the morning daypart down at the Route 9 sites?
You · 9:42 AM
Schema Scout · routed to Store Ops Agent

I pulled the 6–9a daypart for the 14 Route 9 sites against the chain baseline. Two causes, one of them scheduling.

SignalFinding
daypart_sales6–9a revenue −11% vs. chain, coffee units −18%
labor_schedulingSecond associate clocks in at 7:30a, peak starts 6:40a at 9 of 14 sites
foodservice.wasteBreakfast sandwich waste 14%, hold times past 4 hours at 6 sites

Recommend: move the second open to 6:15a at those nine sites, cut the breakfast batch by one tray, and re-check attach in two weeks.

7 parallel queries 3 sources cited confidence 0.91
Show me the schedule change by site.
You · 9:43 AM
Labor Agent · drafting shift diff
Querying daypart_sales
Ask anything, Ward routes to the right agent. Cmd+K

Reporting

Pinned views built from saved data-lake queries. Every number re-derivable from its SQL.

7d13w52w
Inside-store sales
$12.9M
+2.4% WoW
Foodservice margin
47.3%
−2.1pp
Attach, fuel-to-store
31.2%
−1.6pp
Shrink, cigarettes
1.94%
+0.6pp
Inside-store sales 13 weeks actual, 6 weeks forecast, 80% interval
Actual Forecast 80% interval
% of plan 106 94 100 forecast → W−13 W−5 today +6wk
Holt-Winters + weather regressor MAPE 4.1% at 4wk Backtested 24 months Crosses plan in 3 weeks
Forecast error by horizon MAPE, 24-month backtest
1wk 2.1%
2wk 3.0%
4wk 4.1%
8wk 6.3%
13wk 8.9%
Accuracy bar for promo decisions: ≤5% at 4wk
Models in production Every forecast ships a model card
ModelHorizonMAPE
holt_winters4wk4.1%
arima_sarimax13wk8.9%
gbm_demand1wk2.1%
bayes_hiernew store11.4%

Sources

Connect external systems to the data lake.

NameTypeLast sync
ncr_pos_transactionsimport2m ago
pdi_fuel_transactionsimport2m ago
verifone_forecourt_eventsimport14m ago
ncr_planogram_auditimport1h ago
retail_daypart_salesimport1h ago
retail_foodservice_wasteimport1h ago
retail_labor_schedulingimport1h ago

Policies

Browse and manage Cedar access policies for your tenant.

TLS 1.3 AES-256 Read-only SOC 2 II
Policy IDEffectResources
ops-read-defaultpermitModel::*
lp-read-shrinkagepermitModel::"inventory_shrinkage"
vendor-blockedforbidModel::"labor_*"
fuel-team-forecourtpermitModel::"fuel_transactions"
Stockout for Convenience on NCR data, live product demo.

Why Stockout matters for Convenience retail

The c-store value proposition is instant availability, a customer who can't find their energy drink drives to the next location, not to the next aisle. Ward models hourly sell-through by daypart, traffic flow, weather, and local events to predict which SKUs will empty before the next delivery window.

Why this combination
is its own problem.

A Head of LP in convenience retail owns numbers that move faster than the reporting cycle that covers them. Transactions/hour, attach rate, basket size shift store by store, daily. A monthly pack cannot represent that. Shrinkage costs you more than you think. Ward finds out where.

  • 01 DSD direct-store-delivery vendors operate on a fixed cycle; when they short-ship, the gap doesn't surface until the next visit.
  • 02 Daily order quantities use chain-average lift factors, missing site-specific events (concerts, sports, construction reroutes) that can swing demand 50-200%.

Benchmarks. C-store top-50 SKUs cover 35-55% of inside-store revenue. Healthy availability on the top-50 runs 95-98%; each percentage drop maps to roughly 0.4-0.7% inside-store revenue loss because of basket-walk-away.

What Ward has eyes on.

The stockout model runs on a daily cycle, not on a reporting calendar. It picks up the pattern, explains root cause, and attaches what to do about it before the number reaches a review deck.

Every one of your locations gets its own baseline. Ward watches transactions/hour, attach rate, basket size against it and pulls forward only the deviations that hold up. The two that show up most in convenience retail are daypart demand variation and planogram compliance, and both are baseline problems before they are P&L problems.

The connection to NCR Voyix is read-only and runs on your schedule. Ward reads straight from POS transactions, item-level sales, and the rest of the feed, then cross-references it with external context your POS does not carry: weather, local events, competitor pricing.

At the metric level. Requires hourly velocity modeling across dayparts, delivery window alignment, planogram compliance tracking, and weather-adjusted demand curves for beverage and impulse categories.

Signals · POS at hour-store-SKU, current on-hand, DSD delivery schedules, weather forecasts, traffic counts, and local event feeds tied to store geocodes.

What the first 90 days
actually look like.

  1. 01

    Week 1: read-only connection

    Ward sits on top of NCR Voyix with read-only credentials and begins ingesting POS transactions and item-level sales. No config changes on your side. First daily cards arrive within 48 hours.

  2. 02

    Weeks 2 to 3: baselines

    Ward needs roughly two weeks of history per store to separate a real deviation from normal variance. During this window the findings are directionally right and the thresholds are still moving.

  3. 03

    Weeks 4 to 12: steady state

    Ward delivers insight cards every morning, each with the cause and a recommended action. Volume settles at a level a single person can read over coffee. The measure of success is not how many insight cards 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

POS transactions
Item-level sales
Tender data
Daypart summaries
Loyalty data

Impact metrics with NCR

Attach Rate
Adjacencies mapped per daypart
Impulse cross-sell patterns identified by time of day.
Daypart Revenue
Underperforming hours exposed
Traffic and weather data pinpoint revenue-light dayparts.
Shrinkage
Slow-bleed loss detected
POS anomaly patterns caught that periodic audits miss.
Basket Size
Bundle opportunities surfaced
Item-level sales mined for actionable upsell patterns.

Data lake enrichment

Ward enriches NCR data with: POS transactions, Weather & events, Loyalty data, Competitor proximity, Demographic data

Shrinkage costs you more than you think. Ward finds out where.

Pain points
  • ×Shrinkage lands as a year-end surprise
  • ×Cannot distinguish theft from spoilage from admin error
  • ×High-shrinkage stores only identified during audits
  • ×No correlation between operational changes and loss patterns
  • ×Exception-based reporting misses slow-bleed patterns
How Ward helps
  • Store-level shrinkage tracking with cause attribution
  • Anomaly detection flags stores deviating from estate average
  • Receiving dock discrepancy patterns identified automatically
  • Correlation analysis links operational changes to loss shifts
  • Trend analysis catches slow-bleed patterns audits miss

US retail shrinkage hit $112.1 billion in 2022. Up 19.4% year over year. Source: National Retail Federation

Convenience KPI impact

Attach Rate
Impulse adjacencies
Daypart-specific cross-sell opportunities surfaced.
Daypart Revenue
Weak hours identified
Which hours and categories underperform, and why.
Planogram Compliance
Sales-correlated flags
Deviations flagged once they start costing revenue.
Shrinkage
Slow-bleed detection
Transaction-level anomalies that periodic audits miss.

Frequently asked questions

Ward detects SKUs trending toward zero-on-hand and alerts your team with replenishment recommendations before customers notice. For Convenience retail specifically, Ward monitors 3,000+ SKUs across your locations and delivers automated insight cards with root cause analysis and recommended actions.

Ward tracks Transactions/hour, Attach rate, Basket size, Planogram compliance, Daypart mix at the store-category level. Ward analyzes sell-through velocity, current inventory levels, lead times, and supplier reliability to predict stockouts 24-72 hours before they occur.

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.

Yes. Ward reads NCR data and combines it with contextual signals (weather, events, demographics) to generate Convenience-specific insight cards. No custom development required.

Shrinkage costs you more than you think. Ward finds out where. Ward solves this with automated insight cards: Store-level shrinkage tracking with cause attribution. Anomaly detection flags stores deviating from estate average. Receiving dock discrepancy patterns identified automatically.

Ward delivers daily insight cards covering Transactions/hour, Attach rate, Basket size, tailored for Loss Prevention decision-making. Each card includes what changed, why it matters, and what to do next.

Requires hourly velocity modeling across dayparts, delivery window alignment, planogram compliance tracking, and weather-adjusted demand curves for beverage and impulse categories.

Ward detects energy drink velocity running well above normal at university-adjacent stores during homecoming weekend, an event its model picked up from local data. Standard delivery won't replenish until Monday. Ward issues stockout prediction cards for the affected stores and recommends emergency redistribution from lower-velocity suburban locations to protect weekend revenue.

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.

See what Convenience stockout problems Ward catches.

Root causes, not just alerts. See it on your data.

Read-only to start · your LLM keys · SOC 2 Type II underway · or book a call directly

Find out what your data has been hiding.

Tell us about your operation. We’ll show you the problems Ward catches, and the ones your current tools miss.

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