Why every buyer needs a retail cloud management database

Five years ago, JP Morgan Chase lost $6 billion in a case that came to be known as the “London Whale Incident“. The culprit? Copy and paste errors in an Excel spreadsheet.

The risks of doing business in Excel aren’t new news, but businesses are still searching for the best alternative. For retailers, a database system that houses all buying information in a central location, that provides access and tools for both planning and buying teams, and that is updated in real-time, is the ideal solution.

With daVinci’s Retail Cloud Management System, that solution is reality.

The benefits of a centralized retail management database
“It’s better than Excel” is a good starting point, but a centralized retail cloud management database offers many more tangible benefits to your organization than that. Those benefits include:

• Improved collaboration across teams and cross-functional partners
• Greater visibility from management on down
• Data Intergrity
• Increased efficiency and productivity, eliminating duplication and redundancies

See also: What is a retail cloud management system?

It’s easier to share information from a centralized database
With a centralized retail cloud management system database, everyone is working with the same data, and that data is updated in real-time. when you connect your merchandise planning to your buying, your buying efforts are tied directly to your financial goals so that everyone is aware of the targets they’re working towards.

You also connect all of the buyers throughout your organization, which means you build better company-wide assortments and make better buying decisions, because everyone has access to the same information in real-time.

See also: How daVinci’s Retail Management System incorporates a centralized database

Realize greater visibility and better reporting
How much of a difference would it make to the day-to-day lives of your managers if they didn’t have to wait for updates or track down and roll up multiple spreadsheets from multiple departments? With a centralized database, that information is always at hand, allowing managers to see what their teams are buying before it’s bought, giving them at-a-glance insight into the latest numbers, consolidated so they can see how the roll-up impacts their strategic plans and the power to generate reports that are always using the latest information. And that should make your managers happier—or at least less stressed and more informed—than ever.

A centralized database reduces risk and improves dependability
The more spreadsheets you have within your organization, the greater risk you have of errors being made or data being lost or missed during a consolidation. And how many times have you seen someone overriding an excel formula? On the other hand, a centralized database means better data integrity and fewer data conflicts. It also means better data security, as you’ll know exactly who has access and you never have to worry about a spreadsheet being left inaccessible on someone’s desktop, or worse yet, not being backed up.

See also: How spreadsheets are holding your assortment planning efforts back

Increase efficiency and productivity with a centralized database
When buyers, financial planners, and managers have access to the same data, everyone has fewer hoops to jump through to collect information. This means peace of mind with data integrity; therefore, better decisions can be made faster. Your buyers can look at all the numbers and see the true cost of a buy, and get visibility into what other buyers in the organization are ordering, before they commit to a buy. That alone can save your business a significant margin.

Technology moves quickly. We’re often moving on to the next thing before we’ve even made the most of our current solutions. Right now, companies are talking about leveraging big data and making use of artificial intelligence to predict results and anticipate needs. As amazing as those things sound, that’s running before you can even walk—or crawl, in some cases.

Retailers need to lay a solid technology foundation before they can start building advanced solutions on top of it. That foundation starts with a centralized database for merchandise planning and buy information.