A furniture VP Supply Chain running promos on Epicor
A furniture VP Supply Chain on Epicor should not be hunting for promos problems. Ward surfaces them each day.
The full picture: furniture promos, Epicor data, Supply Chain decisions
You find out about stockouts after customers do. Ward filters to what a VP Supply Chain can act on and drops the rest.
Promo Effectiveness is a finding type Ward runs continuously. Ward measures true promotional lift net of cannibalization, pull-forward, and pantry loading.
A Furniture Manufacturing & Retail operator is continuous review 10,000+ SKUs across locations. ERP-locked production data, long lead times, and margin erosion you don't see until quarter-end. Ward connects your internal systems and surfaces what matters.
How Ward returns Promos daily cards: Ward isolates incremental volume from baseline, measures cross-SKU cannibalization, estimates pull-forward effects, and calculates true ROI.
Setup: Ward connects via Epicor REST API. Compatible with Epicor Prophet 21 and Epicor Eclipse.
What you get
- Pull-forward detection
- Promo ROI scorecards
- Net lift measurement (not gross)
- Cannibalization quantification
Chat
Ask anything. Ward routes to the right agent and returns cited answers.
I pulled upholstery cost of goods by BOM line against the last price file. Three quarters of the drop is material and freight, not discounting.
| Signal | Finding |
|---|---|
bom_cost_actuals | Foam and frame stock +9.2% since the March price file, never carried to list |
freight.inbound | Inbound container cost +$412 per unit-equivalent on the Vietnam lane |
channel.mix | Wholesale share up 6pp, and wholesale runs 11pp under DTC margin |
Recommend: reprice the six affected SKUs at the next list cycle, quote the alternate foam vendor, and hold wholesale allocation flat until list catches up.
bom_cost_actuals…
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 |
|---|---|---|
epicor_production_stage_log | import | 2m ago |
epicor_bom_cost_actuals | import | 2m ago |
sap_inventory_snapshot | import | 14m ago |
netsuite_sales_orders | import | 1h ago |
retail_showroom_pos | import | 1h ago |
retail_freight_inbound | import | 1h ago |
retail_dealer_orders | import | 1h ago |
Policies
Browse and manage Cedar access policies for your tenant.
| Policy ID | Effect | Resources |
|---|---|---|
finance-read-default | permit | Model::* |
sourcing-read-bom | permit | Model::"bom_cost_actuals" |
dealer-blocked | forbid | Model::"bom_*" |
plant-read-production | permit | Model::"production_stage_log" |
Why Promos matters for Furniture retail
Furniture demand bunches around holiday events, Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, and a discount-trained customer waits for them. That makes pull-forward the central question: how much of an event's volume was truly incremental versus sales that would have happened anyway. Ward measures net lift after pull-forward and cross-model cannibalization, so the promo calendar is built on real incrementality, not gross event totals.
What Ward has eyes on.
The promos model runs daily, not on a reporting calendar. It picks up the pattern, explains what caused it, and attaches what to do about it before the number reaches a review deck.
Ward scans continuously 10,000+ SKUs throughout your locations, at the store-category level rather than the chain roll-up. The metrics under watch include inventory carrying cost, order-to-delivery cycle, gross margin by channel. A roll-up hides a single-store problem inside a healthy average, which is how disconnected ERP, warehouse, and POS systems stays invisible for a quarter.
Ward reads straight from Epicor rather than replacing it. Sales orders, inventory, purchase orders come across on a read-only connection, get enriched with contextual data, and come back as daily cards. Your ERP is untouched.
At the metric level. Ward isolates incremental volume from baseline, quantifies pull-forward by comparing pre- and post-event demand, measures cross-model cannibalization, and calculates true event ROI net of markdown. On thin furniture margins, a promo that mostly shifts timing while trading down the mix can lose money at full-price-equivalent even when the event looks busy.
Why this combination
is its own problem.
Epicor is the system of record for most furniture operators of your size, which means the inputs Ward needs are already there. The gap is not data collection. It is that nobody has time to read sales orders and inventory every morning across every store.
- 01 Delivery-lag timing blurs the sales window, making pull-forward hard to see unless order date, not delivery date, anchors the analysis.
- 02 Event success is judged on gross units, ignoring that a discount-trained furniture customer would have bought in the surrounding weeks anyway.
Benchmarks. Furniture holiday events routinely show 30 to 60% gross unit lift but far lower true incrementality once pull-forward is removed, often in the single to low double digits. Trade-down cannibalization can turn a headline-positive event net-margin-negative on a thin-margin assortment.
What the first 90 days
actually look like.
-
01
Week 1: connect
Read-only credentials to Epicor. Ward pulls from sales orders, inventory, purchase orders and starts building baselines. First daily cards land inside 48 hours, before baselines are stable, so you can see the shape of the output early.
-
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.
-
03
Weeks 4 to 12: operating rhythm
Daily cards arrive each day and get triaged like any other queue. Most teams find the volume settles into something one person clears in ten minutes. What matters is the action rate, not the alert count.
How Ward connects to Epicor
Ward integrates with Epicor for home improvement, furniture, and building supply retailers. Inventory, purchasing, production, and sales data power insight cards.
Setup: Ward connects via Epicor REST API. Compatible with Epicor Prophet 21 and Epicor Eclipse.
Data Ward reads from Epicor
Impact metrics with Epicor
Data lake enrichment
Ward enriches Epicor data with: Sales orders, Weather & events, Contractor/Pro data, Competitor pricing, Vendor scorecards
You find out about stockouts after customers do.
- ×Demand forecasts are off by 15-25% and nobody catches it until the shelf is empty
- ×Supplier fill rate problems announce themselves at the receiving dock
- ×Safety stock levels get set once a year and left alone
- ×No early warning system for supply chain disruptions
- ×Replenishment exceptions require manual triage every morning
- ✓Stockout prediction cards arrive 24-72 hours before empty shelves
- ✓Supplier fill rate tracking with automatic escalation
- ✓Dynamic safety stock recommendations based on current demand signals
- ✓Weather, event, and macro-driven demand adjustments
- ✓Replenishment exceptions auto-prioritized by revenue impact
Stockouts cost retailers $1.14 trillion in missed sales globally each year. Source: IHL Group
Furniture KPI impact
Frequently asked questions
Ward measures true promotional lift net of cannibalization, pull-forward, and pantry loading. For Furniture retail specifically, Ward monitors 10,000+ SKUs across your locations and delivers automated insight cards with root cause analysis and recommended actions.
Ward tracks Inventory carrying cost, Order-to-delivery cycle, Gross margin by channel, Raw material cost variance, Custom order cycle time at the store-category level. Ward isolates incremental volume from baseline, measures cross-SKU cannibalization, estimates pull-forward effects, and calculates true ROI.
Ward connects via Epicor REST API. Compatible with Epicor Prophet 21 and Epicor Eclipse. Data points include: Sales orders, Inventory, Purchase orders, Customer accounts, Pricing tiers, Vendor performance.
Yes. Ward reads Epicor data and combines it with contextual signals (weather, events, demographics) to generate Furniture-specific insight cards. No custom development required.
You find out about stockouts after customers do. Ward solves this with automated insight cards: Stockout prediction cards arrive 24-72 hours before empty shelves. Supplier fill rate tracking with automatic escalation. Dynamic safety stock recommendations based on current demand signals.
Ward delivers daily insight cards covering Inventory carrying cost, Order-to-delivery cycle, Gross margin by channel, tailored for Supply Chain decision-making. Each card includes what changed, why it matters, and what to do next.
Ward isolates incremental volume from baseline, quantifies pull-forward by comparing pre- and post-event demand, measures cross-model cannibalization, and calculates true event ROI net of markdown. On thin furniture margins, a promo that mostly shifts timing while trading down the mix can lose money at full-price-equivalent even when the event looks busy.
A Presidents Day mattress event posts a 45% unit lift and looks like a win. Ward decomposes it and shows most of the volume was pulled forward from the four weeks on either side, with true incremental lift closer to 9%. It also finds the promoted mid-tier model cannibalized the higher-margin premium line. Ward's card recommends a shallower discount on the mid-tier and a bundle on the premium line for the next event, protecting margin without losing the traffic the holiday brings.
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 Furniture promos problems Ward catches.
Root causes, not just alerts. See it on your data.
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