Maximize Your Retail Sales with Accurate Weather Forecasting

 Climate change is impacting us all. Retailers are no exception. With this rapid change in the weather, many retailers have faced severe impacts on their businesses and need a suitable Retail Software Solution. For instance, not too long ago, in a warmer than usual winter, the US market for warm clothes lost nearly $180 million in sales. Nobody expected a warmer climate even though it was forecasted earlier. The problem lay in their planning mechanism. They ordered inventory according to their usual pattern. They did not have a reliable software system. However, these mistakes can now be avoided with accurate atmosphere mapping and a Retail Software Solution that aids you with all the tools required for inventory planning considering numerous factors impacting the demand.  

You can easily shift from being reactive and acting late to forecasting weather events and getting ready for their impact. As soon as you get the relevant information on your sales, you can match them with the weather forecast with your historical data to plan your replenishment.  

All in all, you can now get hyper-localized weather forecasts in a Retail ERP Solution to modify your planning, staffing, marketing, and merchandising for each store. With IBM and the weather company’s high-resolution weather model, you can get hourly updates to instantly predict the progress of weather events such as heavy rains small-scale anywhere on earth.  

Read this blog further to find out how you can maximize your retail sales with the help of a Retail Software Solution.  

Staff with Utmost Cost Efficiency Using Retail Software Solution

You can make better staffing decisions if you already know the weather in advance. For instance, you may want to have three extra staff to serve customers at your store on a sunny winter day, because most people are more likely to visit a store than a mall. Or you may want to have someone at the door on a stormy and snowy day to clean and dry it. When the weather is bad, there is usually a high demand for pick-up services, so you may want to ensure you have enough people at work to provide a smooth delivery service.  

These staffing decisions are intuitive, but a human intuition is more likely to fail as compared to a machine. Retail managers, despite being busy all day, can take some time to look at weather forecasts and decide how many staff members they need throughout the week. With a Retail ERP with an effective staff management system, you can make cost-effective staffing decisions.  

Enhance Merchandising  

You can order the right quantity of items with a Retail Software Solution forecasting weather. For instance, if the spring is warmer than usual, you may want to display barbecues, mosquito repellents, and shorts earlier. See if the temperatures are going down or up? If so, do not forget to keep a fat stock of flu and cold medicines, and don’t move warm socks just yet.  

An effective way to understand how you can optimize your merchandise is to pay attention to your customer’s basket mix. You may find counter-intuitive correlations. Take Wal-Mart for example, they noticed that ice cream sales do not increase until the weather reaches 25°C (77°F). They further observed that families bought smaller packs during economic downturns, but as soon as the situation got normal, they hopped back on large packages. All these analyses were possible due to Big Data. A Retail Software Solution like LS Retail comes with Power BI (Business Intelligence technology) which collects data from different touchpoints and provides insightful and actionable reports.  

Get More Effective Marketing  

Have you ever thought of any marketing strategy based on the weather? Hotel Chain Red Roof did, and it even gave them a business boost of 10% in one year! All they did was use basic weather knowledge to their advantage. They availed themselves of free flight cancellation information. Red Roof ran on an algorithm that considered multiple variables such as travel conditions, and cancellation rates by airports and airlines. They sent targeted mobile ads to stranded travelers, with a link attached to book a nearby hotel in just one click. 

Get Prepared for Massive Weather Events  

As extreme weather events are on the rise globally, you need to think of more than just storing canned food and torches. Weather events like floods, droughts, and storms can lead to massive retail destruction while hampering delivery flow, staff planning, and replenishment issues. Store Management Software can help you deal with such event hits. For instance, a Retail Software Solution can be used with geospatial data to locate an alternative vendor whenever needed, mitigate business risks, and re-route deliveries.  

You can use big data information like weather forecasting for a hundred causes. Use it for optimum staffing, marketing, replenishment, and tackling weather events. With a suitable Retail Software Solution, you can anticipate market conditions and customer demands. Azure Cloud hosted LS Retail combines big data analytics, innovation, omnichannel strategies, and more. If you are looking for an LS Retail implementation Partner, Contact Trident Information Systems. Get yourself a Gold Dynamics 365 Partner and Diamond LS Retail implementation Partner at your service. Our dedicated team is there to serve you at any moment.