Grocery · RELEX · Director Store Ops

What a grocery Director Store Ops pulls out of RELEX

Your RELEX feed covers 30,000+ SKUs throughout your stores. Ward reads it for store operations.

Ward and RELEX for Grocery store operations

Managing 800 stores from a spreadsheet is insane. Ward delivers findings scoped to store operations decision-making.

A Grocery & Supermarket operator is continuous review 30,000+ SKUs over stores. Fresh availability, shrinkage, and promo effectiveness across hundreds of stores. Ward monitors perishable turn rates and flags waste before it happens.

How the connection works. Ward reads RELEX data via API. Monitors forecast accuracy and flags exceptions before they compound.

app.getward.ai Live demo
Acme Grocery @Merchandising: Fresh Analyst claude-sonnet default
A

Chat

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

Why did Store 37 miss target last week?
You · 9:42 AM
Schema Scout · routed to Merchandising Agent

I pulled Store 37’s last 28 days against the chain baseline. Two root causes, both compounding.

SignalFinding
labor_efficiencyRev/labor-hour −22% vs. cluster, staffing mismatch at 11a–1p peak
inventory.freshFresh fill 83%, backroom replenishment lag at 2–4p
promo.liftBOGO 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.

8 parallel queries 3 sources cited confidence 0.92
Show me how to fix the staffing mismatch.
You · 9:43 AM
Labor Agent · drafting schedule diff
Querying labor_scheduling
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
Revenue vs. forecast
$48.2M
+4.2% WoW
Gross margin, center store
22.6%
−3.2pp
Fill rate, fresh
83.4%
−4.1pp
Shrink, West region
2.41%
+0.8pp
Revenue vs. forecast 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
sap_pos_transactionsimport2m ago
sap_inventory_shrinkageimport2m ago
sap_labor_schedulingimport14m ago
relex_replenishment_planimport1h ago
blue_yonder_forecast_dailyimport1h ago
retail_fresh_waste_dailyimport1h ago
retail_promo_calendarimport1h ago

Policies

Browse and manage Cedar access policies for your tenant.

TLS 1.3 AES-256 Read-only SOC 2 II
Policy IDEffectResources
merch-read-defaultpermitModel::*
lp-read-shrinkagepermitModel::"inventory_shrinkage"
vendor-blockedforbidModel::"labor_*"
fresh-team-westpermitModel::"fresh_waste_daily"
for Grocery on RELEX data, live product demo.

What Ward delivers

  • Morning brief delivered at 06:47 with prioritized action list
  • Estate-wide heat map of store performance, updated hourly
  • Staffing recommendations correlated with predicted traffic
  • Planogram compliance anomalies detected and flagged
  • Consistent exception handling with recommended actions

Metrics Ward monitors

Fill rate
Shrinkage %
Fresh waste %
Promo lift
Basket size

Grocery challenges Ward solves

  • Fresh waste & spoilage
  • On-shelf availability gaps
  • Promo cannibalization
  • Supplier fill rate variance
  • Seasonal demand spikes

What Ward has eyes on.

Every one of your stores gets its own baseline. Ward watches fill rate, shrinkage %, fresh waste % against it and raises only the deviations that hold up. The two that show up most in grocery retail are fresh waste & spoilage and on-shelf availability gaps, and both are baseline problems before they are P&L problems.

Ward reads straight from RELEX rather than replacing it. Demand forecasts, space plans, workforce forecasts come across on a read-only connection, get enriched with contextual data, and come back as cards. Your Supply Chain is untouched.

Why this combination
is its own problem.

Running Ward on RELEX in a grocery fleet skips the usual first step. There is no ingestion project, because RELEX Solutions already holds demand forecasts, space plans, workforce forecasts. Ward ingests what is there.

What the first 90 days
actually look like.

  1. 01

    Week 1: connect

    Read-only credentials to RELEX Solutions. Ward ingests demand forecasts, space plans, workforce forecasts 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.

  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 insight cards are directionally right and the thresholds are still moving.

  3. 03

    Weeks 4 to 12: operating rhythm

    Daily cards arrive daily 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 RELEX Solutions

Ward integrates with RELEX for unified retail planning. Ward monitors RELEX forecasts against actuals and surfaces planning exceptions as insight cards.

Setup: Ward reads RELEX data via API. Monitors forecast accuracy and flags exceptions before they compound.

Data Ward reads from RELEX

Demand forecasts
Space plans
Workforce forecasts
Promotion plans
Replenishment orders

Impact metrics with RELEX

Forecast Accuracy
Drift flagged per store
Accuracy decay caught before it compounds across locations.
Space Productivity
Planogram gaps exposed
Space plans checked against actual sell-through per fixture.
Replenishment Efficiency
Manual triage reduced
Exceptions ranked by revenue impact and urgency.
Fresh Waste
Perishable ordering tightened
Hyperlocal weather and events sharpen fresh item forecasts.

Data lake enrichment

Ward enriches RELEX data with: RELEX forecasts, POS actuals, Weather & events, Demographic data, Supplier performance

Managing 800 stores from a spreadsheet is insane.

Pain points
  • ×Morning check-ins rely on phone calls and email chains
  • ×No single view of which stores need attention today
  • ×Labor scheduling is disconnected from demand signals
  • ×Planogram compliance is checked manually, quarterly
  • ×Exception management is reactive and inconsistent
How Ward helps
  • Morning brief delivered at 06:47 with prioritized action list
  • Estate-wide heat map of store performance, updated hourly
  • Staffing recommendations correlated with predicted traffic
  • Planogram compliance anomalies detected and flagged
  • Consistent exception handling with recommended actions

Poor labor allocation and inconsistent execution cost multi-store retailers 3–5% in lost sales. Source: RSR Research

Grocery KPI impact

Shrinkage
Cause-level attribution
Loss prevention shifts from guesswork to targeted intervention.
Fill Rate
24–72hr head start
Stockout prediction cards arrive before customers notice gaps.
Fresh Waste
Flagged before spoilage
Perishable turn rates monitored by store.
Promo ROI
Net lift, not gross
True lift net of cannibalization and pull-forward.

Frequently asked questions

Ward reads RELEX data via API. Monitors forecast accuracy and flags exceptions before they compound. Data points include: Demand forecasts, Space plans, Workforce forecasts, Promotion plans, Replenishment orders.

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

Managing 800 stores from a spreadsheet is insane. Ward solves this with automated insight cards: Morning brief delivered at 06:47 with prioritized action list. Estate-wide heat map of store performance, updated hourly. Staffing recommendations correlated with predicted traffic.

Ward delivers daily insight cards covering Fill rate, Shrinkage %, Fresh waste %, tailored for Store Operations decision-making. Each card includes what changed, why it matters, and what to do next.

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 Grocery 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.

Step 1 of 3
What are your goals?
Step 2 of 3
About your operation
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