Use prebuilt industry templates
Important
Some of the functionality described in this release plan has not been released. Delivery timelines may change and projected functionality may not be released (see Microsoft policy). Learn more: What's new and planned
| Enabled for | Public preview | General availability |
|---|---|---|
| Users by admins, makers, or analysts | Jan 2025 | Mar 2025 |
Business value
In today’s fiercely competitive retail landscape, retailers strive to gain a profound understanding of their customers. Making data-driven decisions across all facets of their business is crucial. The presence of effective analytical solutions significantly contributes to achieving success. To allow retailers to enable these analytical solutions with reduced effort and faster time to market, we will be providing ready-made industry templates for the most widely used retail scenarios like inventory optimization analytics, customer segmentation, and customer sentiment analysis as part of this release. These templates will consist of a standardized data model, sample PBI report, and AI/ML (optional) capabilities embedded within each template.
Feature details
We are investing in several key features and capabilities:
Automatic mapping and transformation pipeline in retail: This will allow retailers to streamline data integration, migration, and transformation. We will provide a smart matching feature which will take retailers source schema and based upon the industry template selected, we will auto-map source fields with target. This will significantly reduce the effort needed by each retailer to do this process manually. We will also generate the data pipelines or notebooks needed for doing the actual transformation.
Customer segmentation in retail: This involves segregating your customer base into distinct groups based on shared characteristics, behaviors, or demographics. The goal is to better understand and target specific segments with tailored marketing approaches that resonate with their unique needs and preferences. This helps with tailoring marketing strategies, inventory optimization, and using data to define various pricing strategies based upon your segments.
Inventory optimization in retail: This refers to the strategic management of inventory to achieve a right balance of supply and demand, reducing costs and increasing customer satisfaction. It involves forecasting the demand and inventory needs based upon historic sales trends, customer buying patterns etc. The correct inventory optimization solution has a huge impact on a company's top / bottom line.
Customer sentiment analysis: This is the ability to take the customer feedback to understand customer brand affinity and their purchasing patterns. It involves analyzing customer feedback through surveys, feedback, product reviews, market analysis etc. to understand their sentiment towards the product, brand, and company.
Supply chain analytics in retail: This refers to leveraging data and analytics to optimize various aspects related to procurement, production, distribution, and inventory management. Effective supply chain tracking helps retailers to reduce costs, optimize inventory, track supplier performance, and improve logistics.