Home · Snowflake · Head of Procurement

Snowflake plus Ward, for a home Head of Procurement

Ward ingests Snowflake and sends home insight cards scoped to procurement. Merchandising wants Ward. You sign the contract.

What a home Head of Procurement gets from Snowflake

Merchandising wants Ward. You sign the contract. Ward sends insight cards scoped to procurement decision-making.

A Home Improvement operator is tracking 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.

Setup: Ward connects via Snowflake SQL API with key-pair authentication. Read-only warehouse. Your data never leaves Snowflake.

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 Snowflake 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

Why this combination
is its own problem.

A Head of Procurement in home retail owns numbers that move faster than the reporting cycle that covers them. Project basket value, seasonal accuracy, long-tail turn shift store by store, every morning. A monthly pack cannot represent that. Merchandising wants Ward. You sign the contract.

What Ward has eyes on.

Ward reads any table or view in your Snowflake account, cross-database joins, historical data at any depth from Snowflake on a read-only connection. Nothing is written back, and your Data Platform configuration does not change. Snowflake stays the system of record.

Ward keeps a running read on 50,000+ SKUs throughout your stores, at the store-category level rather than the chain roll-up. The metrics under watch include project basket value, seasonal accuracy, long-tail turn. A roll-up hides a single-store problem inside a healthy average, which is how project basket identification stays invisible for a quarter.

What the first 90 days
actually look like.

  1. 01

    Week 1: connect

    Read-only credentials to Snowflake. Ward pulls from any table or view in your Snowflake account, cross-database joins, historical data at any depth 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: operating rhythm

    Cards arrive every morning 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 Snowflake

Ward queries your Snowflake data warehouse directly. If your retail data lives in Snowflake, Ward reads it without moving or copying anything.

Setup: Ward connects via Snowflake SQL API with key-pair authentication. Read-only warehouse. Your data never leaves Snowflake.

Data Ward reads from Snowflake

Any table or view in your Snowflake account
Cross-database joins
Historical data at any depth

Impact metrics with Snowflake

Time to Insight
Zero-copy, zero-ETL
Queries run against existing warehouse tables directly.
Forecast Accuracy
Enrichment joins added
Weather, events, and demographics joined to Snowflake tables.
Data Utilization
Dormant tables activated
Unused warehouse data brought into cross-domain analysis.
Anomaly Detection Speed
Continuous monitoring
Deviations caught days before scheduled reports surface them.

Data lake enrichment

Ward enriches Snowflake data with: Any Snowflake table, Weather & events, Demographics, Competitor data, 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

Ward connects via Snowflake SQL API with key-pair authentication. Read-only warehouse. Your data never leaves Snowflake. Data points include: Any table or view in your Snowflake account, Cross-database joins, Historical data at any depth.

Yes. Ward reads Snowflake 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