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Ward and BigQuery for Home procurement

A home Head of Procurement running BigQuery gets project basket value, seasonal accuracy, long-tail turn watches daily, with root cause attached.

What a home Head of Procurement gets from Google BigQuery

Home Improvement changes the scale of the problem: 50,000+ SKUs, every one of your stores. Project-based purchasing, long-tail SKUs, and seasonal volatility. Ward manages the complexity of 50,000+ SKU environments with ease.

Merchandising wants Ward. You sign the contract. Ward pulls forward the readings that change a procurement decision.

How the connection works. Service account with BigQuery Data Viewer role. Ward runs read-only SQL queries on your schedule.

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"
for Home on BigQuery data, live product demo.

What Ward delivers

  • 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

Metrics Ward monitors

Project basket value
Seasonal accuracy
Long-tail turn
Pro customer share
Attachment rate

Home challenges Ward solves

  • Project basket identification
  • Seasonal pre-positioning
  • Long-tail inventory
  • Pro vs DIY segmentation
  • Weather-driven demand

What Ward has eyes on.

Ward reads any BigQuery dataset, gA4 event exports, ads data transfers from Google BigQuery on a read-only connection. Nothing is written back, and your Data Platform configuration does not change. BigQuery stays the system of record.

Coverage is store by store, category by category. Ward keeps a running read on project basket value, seasonal accuracy, long-tail turn over 50,000+ SKUs and compares each store against its own baseline, not against the chain. That is the difference between knowing the store base is fine and knowing which seven stores are not.

Why this combination
is its own problem.

Google BigQuery is the system of record for most home operators of your size, which means the signals Ward needs are already there. The gap is not data collection. It is that nobody has time to read any BigQuery dataset and gA4 event exports every morning across every store.

What the first 90 days
actually look like.

  1. 01

    Week 1: connect

    Read-only credentials to Google BigQuery. Ward ingests any BigQuery dataset, gA4 event exports, ads data transfers 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: 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.

  3. 03

    Weeks 4 to 12: steady state

    Ward sends daily 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 Google BigQuery

Ward queries BigQuery using your existing datasets. GA4 exports, POS data, CRM exports. Ward reads it where it lives.

Setup: Service account with BigQuery Data Viewer role. Ward runs read-only SQL queries on your schedule.

Data Ward reads from BigQuery

Any BigQuery dataset
GA4 event exports
Ads data transfers
Custom ETL outputs

Impact metrics with BigQuery

Time to Insight
No staging required
GA4, POS, and CRM datasets queried in place.
Marketing Attribution
Online-offline linked
GA4 events joined with in-store POS to close attribution gaps.
Data Activation
Historical data made queryable
Years of unqueried BigQuery data brought into analysis.
Anomaly Detection Speed
Always-on monitoring
Deviations caught between scheduled dashboard reviews.

Data lake enrichment

Ward enriches BigQuery data with: Any BigQuery dataset, GA4 event exports, Weather & events, Demographics, Custom feeds

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

Service account with BigQuery Data Viewer role. Ward runs read-only SQL queries on your schedule. Data points include: Any BigQuery dataset, GA4 event exports, Ads data transfers, Custom ETL outputs.

Yes. Ward reads BigQuery 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.

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 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