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Home assortment from NetSuite, briefed to procurement

Stock what sells. Cut what doesn't. Ward runs it on NetSuite data over your home estate, scoped to procurement.

Assortment Planning for Home on NetSuite, scoped to procurement

Merchandising wants Ward. You sign the contract. Ward writes the finding at the altitude a Head of Procurement works at.

What assortment planning does: Ward analyzes sell-through by store cluster to recommend which SKUs to add, drop, or reallocate.

For Home Improvement retailers, that means continuous review 50,000+ SKUs across stores. Project-based purchasing, long-tail SKUs, and seasonal volatility. Ward manages the complexity of 50,000+ SKU environments with ease.

What Ward does with that: Ward clusters stores by demographic, traffic, and sales patterns, then measures SKU performance against cluster benchmarks.

How the connection works. Ward connects via SuiteTalk REST or SOAP APIs. Token-based authentication. Read-only access to your NetSuite instance.

What you get

  • Planogram optimization inputs
  • Store cluster segmentation
  • SKU rationalization recommendations
  • Whitespace opportunity detection
app.getward.ai Live demo
Acme Home @Merchandising: Seasonal Analyst claude-sonnet default
A

Chat

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

Why did the spring mulch pre-build miss in the Southeast?
You · 9:42 AM
Schema Scout · routed to Merchandising Agent

I pulled the spring pre-build against the last three seasons and the weather signal for the 22 Southeast stores.

SignalFinding
seasonal_prebuildMulch on-hand hit 61% of plan the week temps broke 70°F
dc_pushDC push started 9 days after the first-warm-week trigger, LY it was 2
attach.projectSoil and edging attach fell 18% at stores that gapped on mulch

Recommend: tie the push trigger to the 10-day forecast instead of the calendar week, pre-position two truckloads at the 8 stores that gapped, and re-set the attach endcap.

9 parallel queries 4 sources cited confidence 0.88
Which stores get the pre-position first?
You · 9:43 AM
Supply Chain Agent · ranking stores
Querying seasonal_prebuild
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. plan
$57.3M
+2.9% WoW
Gross margin, seasonal
31.2%
−2.4pp
Mulch on-hand vs plan
61.4%
−18pp
Special order cycle time
11.6 d
+3.1 days
Revenue vs. plan 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
epicor_pos_transactionsimport2m ago
epicor_special_ordersimport2m ago
netsuite_inventory_snapshotimport14m ago
retail_seasonal_prebuildimport1h ago
retail_sku_velocityimport1h ago
retail_pro_account_salesimport1h ago
retail_weather_dailyimport1h 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::*
pro-team-read-accountspermitModel::"pro_account_sales"
vendor-blockedforbidModel::"labor_*"
supply-read-orderspermitModel::"special_orders"
Assortment for Home on NetSuite data, live product demo.

Why Assortment matters for Home retail

The top 2,000 SKUs generate the bulk of revenue, but the remaining 48,000 are what makes you a project destination. Drop a niche fitting and you lose the entire project basket. Ward identifies which tail SKUs are project-basket anchors worth keeping and which are truly dead weight that should be rationalized.

What Ward has eyes on.

The connection to Oracle NetSuite is read-only and runs on your schedule. Ward reads sales orders, inventory, and the rest of the feed, then cross-references it with external context your ERP does not carry: weather, local events, competitor pricing.

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.

Coverage is store by store, category by category. Ward scans continuously project basket value, seasonal accuracy, long-tail turn throughout 50,000+ SKUs and compares each store against its own baseline, not against the chain. That is the difference between knowing the estate is fine and knowing which seven stores are not.

At the metric level. Ward tracks long-tail project basket affinity, Pro vs DIY assortment dependency, seasonal SKU activation cycles, and revenue-per-linear-foot by department and planogram section.

Signals · POS at SKU-basket grain over 18+ months, Pro account purchase tagging, seasonal activation history, planogram space allocation, and supplier minimum-order constraints.

Why this combination
is its own problem.

Assortment Planning needs sales orders and inventory at minimum. Oracle NetSuite carries both, at the grain the model needs. That is the whole integration story: no middleware, no staging warehouse, no custom extract.

  • 01 Seasonal activation cycles mean a SKU "dead" for 9 months can be critical for 3; chain-wide 90-day velocity cuts kill seasonal anchors prematurely.
  • 02 SKU rationalization based on standalone velocity destroys project-basket anchors and drives customers to competitors for the entire job, net assortment economics turn negative.

Benchmarks. Home improvement long-tail SKUs (the bottom 60-70% of catalog by velocity) typically generate 8-15% of standalone revenue but anchor 25-35% of project basket value. Pro customers depend disproportionately on the tail, losing tail items typically costs 2-4x the standalone revenue impact in Pro retention.

What the first 90 days
actually look like.

  1. 01

    Week 1: connect

    Read-only credentials to Oracle NetSuite. Ward reads sales orders, inventory, purchase orders and starts building baselines. First 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 daily cards are directionally right and the thresholds are still moving.

  3. 03

    Weeks 4 to 12: steady state

    Ward delivers daily cards every morning, each with root cause and what to do about it. 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 Oracle NetSuite

Ward integrates with NetSuite SuiteCommerce, inventory management, and financials. Mid-market retailers get enterprise-grade insight cards.

Setup: Ward connects via SuiteTalk REST or SOAP APIs. Token-based authentication. Read-only access to your NetSuite instance.

Data Ward reads from NetSuite

Sales orders
Inventory
Purchase orders
Customer records
Financial summaries
Item fulfillment

Impact metrics with NetSuite

Inventory Accuracy
Discrepancies reconciled live
POS and fulfillment data cross-checked against NetSuite counts.
Order Fill Rate
Stockouts preempted
Demand forecasting layered onto NetSuite purchase orders.
Gross Margin
Margin erosion flagged
Pricing drift and vendor cost creep caught across financials.
Cash Conversion Cycle
Days of supply reduced
Demand-inventory alignment frees tied working capital.

Data lake enrichment

Ward enriches NetSuite data with: Sales orders, Weather & events, Customer segments, Vendor performance, Market pricing data

Merchandising wants Ward. You sign the contract.

Pain points
  • ×Business sponsor saw the demo. You have a week to vet a vendor you didn't pick
  • ×AI vendors price by seats and tokens. Total cost is unknowable until invoice three
  • ×Multi-year commits with auto-renew. No exit if the pilot stalls
  • ×Renewals come back 30% higher, with no room to push back and no benchmark to cite
  • ×Security and DPA reviews start after the team has already committed
How Ward helps
  • MSA, DPA, SOC 2 Type II underway, and architecture review available before signature
  • Month-to-month contracts. No multi-year lock-in. No auto-renew traps
  • Transparent pricing set by scope and store count
  • 14-day insight guarantee. If Ward doesn't deliver, month two is on us
  • AI strategy, orchestration and reporting-layer work in enterprise grocery at nine-figure revenue. Reference calls available before signature

Enterprise SaaS spend grew 18% YoY. 53% of subscriptions are underused or duplicative. Source: Gartner

Home KPI impact

Seasonal Accuracy
Weather + event driven
Pre-positioning adjusted for peak season signals.
Long-Tail Turn
Dead weight separated
Which tail SKUs serve project needs vs sit idle.
Project Basket Value
Cross-sell surfaced
Project purchasing patterns drive attachment.
Inventory Carrying Cost
Capital freed
Demand forecasting reduces slow-moving overstock.

Frequently asked questions

Ward analyzes sell-through by store cluster to recommend which SKUs to add, drop, or reallocate. For Home retail specifically, Ward monitors 50,000+ SKUs across your stores and delivers automated insight cards with root cause analysis and recommended actions.

Ward tracks Project basket value, Seasonal accuracy, Long-tail turn, Pro customer share, Attachment rate at the store-category level. Ward clusters stores by demographic, traffic, and sales patterns, then measures SKU performance against cluster benchmarks.

Ward connects via SuiteTalk REST or SOAP APIs. Token-based authentication. Read-only access to your NetSuite instance. Data points include: Sales orders, Inventory, Purchase orders, Customer records, Financial summaries, Item fulfillment.

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

Merchandising wants Ward. You sign the contract. Ward solves this with automated insight cards: MSA, DPA, SOC 2 Type II underway, and architecture review available before signature. Month-to-month contracts. No multi-year lock-in. No auto-renew traps. Transparent pricing set by scope and store count.

Ward delivers daily insight cards covering Project basket value, Seasonal accuracy, Long-tail turn, tailored for Procurement decision-making. Each card includes what changed, why it matters, and what to do next.

Ward tracks long-tail project basket affinity, Pro vs DIY assortment dependency, seasonal SKU activation cycles, and revenue-per-linear-foot by department and planogram section.

Plumbing carries thousands of SKUs, hundreds with zero sales in 90 days. Ward's project basket analysis reveals that many of those "dead" SKUs appear alongside high-velocity project items, a specialty elbow fitting with minimal standalone sales is still critical to a complete project basket. Deleting it sends the customer to a competitor for the entire job. Ward separates true orphaned SKUs from project-basket anchors and recommends cutting only the former.

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 Home assortment 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
Step 3 of 3
Your contact info