Promos · BigCommerce · VP Merchandising

Promo Effectiveness on BigCommerce, for merchandising

Your category managers are drowning in spreadsheets. Ward flags promos movement in your BigCommerce data and traces what caused it.

Promo Effectiveness on BigCommerce, for merchandising

Your category managers are drowning in spreadsheets. Ward filters to what a VP Merchandising can act on and drops the rest.

Promo Effectiveness, in one sentence. Ward measures true promotional lift net of cannibalization, pull-forward, and pantry loading.

How Ward hands back Promos daily cards: Ward isolates incremental volume from baseline, measures cross-SKU cannibalization, estimates pull-forward effects, and calculates true ROI.

Getting the data in. Ward connects via BigCommerce REST API with OAuth. Webhooks for real-time order and inventory events.

Capabilities

  • Promo ROI scorecards
  • Net lift measurement (not gross)
  • Cannibalization quantification
  • Pull-forward detection
app.getward.ai Live demo
Acme Retail @Merchandising: VP 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 %
24.1%
−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
retail_inventory_weeklyimport1h ago
retail_google_ads_dailyimport1h ago
retail_meta_ads_dailyimport1h ago
retail_ga4_website_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::*
finance-read-shrinkagepermitModel::"inventory_shrinkage"
vendor-blockedforbidModel::"labor_*"
region-west-onlypermitTenant::"acme"
Promos on BigCommerce data, live product demo.

What Ward has eyes on.

Know which promos actually work. 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.

The connection to BigCommerce is read-only and runs on your schedule. Ward ingests orders, products & variants, and the rest of the feed, then stitches together it with external context your Commerce does not carry: weather, local events, competitor pricing.

Why this combination
is its own problem.

BigCommerce was built for transactions, not for merchandising decisions. The data is right there and it is in the wrong shape. Ward reads straight from orders and products & variants and rewrites them as a decision.

What the first 90 days
actually look like.

  1. 01

    Week 1: connect

    Read-only credentials to BigCommerce. Ward ingests orders, products & variants, customers and starts building baselines. First findings 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

    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 BigCommerce

Ward connects to BigCommerce for omnichannel retailers running headless or traditional storefronts. Orders, catalog, and customer data drive insight cards.

Setup: Ward connects via BigCommerce REST API with OAuth. Webhooks for real-time order and inventory events.

Data Ward reads from BigCommerce

Orders
Products & variants
Customers
Inventory
Promotions
Storefront analytics

Impact metrics with BigCommerce

Sell-Through Rate
Velocity tracked live
Slow movers flagged early enough to reallocate inventory.
Customer LTV
Churn risk identified
Cohort analysis surfaces lapsing buyers and re-engagement timing.
Conversion Rate
Buyer vs browser split
Patterns that convert separated from those that just browse.
Inventory Turnover
Reorder cadence optimized
Demand signals calibrate reorder points across the catalog.

Data lake enrichment

Ward enriches BigCommerce data with: Orders & variants, Customer behavior, Marketing data, Returns & exchanges, Competitor pricing

Your category managers are drowning in spreadsheets.

Pain points
  • ×Promo planning still runs off last year's playbook
  • ×Assortment reviews happen quarterly when they should happen daily
  • ×Price changes chase the market a week behind it
  • ×No visibility into true cannibalization across categories
  • ×Vendor negotiations lack real-time sell-through evidence
How Ward helps
  • Insight cards flag promo cannibalization the day it happens
  • Assortment gaps and whitespace opportunities surface automatically
  • Price elasticity shifts detected before margin erosion compounds
  • Category-level performance cards replace manual spreadsheet reviews
  • Vendor scorecards generated from actual fill rate and quality data

Retailers lose an estimated $300B+ annually to suboptimal assortment and promotional decisions. Source: McKinsey & Company

Frequently asked questions

Ward connects via BigCommerce REST API with OAuth. Webhooks for real-time order and inventory events. Data points include: Orders, Products & variants, Customers, Inventory, Promotions, Storefront analytics.

Your category managers are drowning in spreadsheets. Ward solves this with automated insight cards: Insight cards flag promo cannibalization the day it happens. Assortment gaps and whitespace opportunities surface automatically. Price elasticity shifts detected before margin erosion compounds.

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 promos 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