The DataWeave Blog

Author: Karthik Bettadapura

  • Online Halloween Shopping Is Here to Stay – Winning Share of Search

    Online Halloween Shopping Is Here to Stay – Winning Share of Search

    Lessons from Kroger, Albertson’s, and Safeway’s Optimized Online Positioning   

    As consumers continue their migration to online shopping through and after the pandemic, Halloween shopping is no exception. 

    If that’s the new paradigm, what clues should retailers and brands be looking for to enhance their sales? With Halloween around the corner, the analyst team at DataWeave wanted to see how successfully grocers are partnering with brands to prepare for the influx of online Halloween shoppers. We tracked insights from September 14 to 24, 2021, using data from Kroger, Albertson’s, and Safeway websites to understand the preparedness of each retailer, their partnered brands, and how their online strategies compare with one another.

    There are hundreds of ways for a consumer to search for a brand’s products online and of critical importance, almost 50 percent of traffic across the top 1000 retailers come through search. At the same time, consumers are becoming less brand conscious. This is a significant development, and there are significant ramifications to consumers searching for products using generic category specific keywords without including brand names in the search.  Consequently, we can’t sufficiently stress how understanding online channel experiences is critical to successful outcomes. Retailers and brands alike need an integrated view of how to improve their discoverability and share of search by considering all touchpoints in the digital commerce ecosystem.

    The Importance of Product Descriptions, Assortment, Sizes, Price Points

    With 75 percent of people never scrolling past the first page of a website when searching for the goods they desire, getting products to page one is imperative to a brand’s success. While in-store, festive displays will help drive traffic and availability awareness, the ‘digital shelf’ is a totally different locus of opportunity. Here, brands rely on proper product descriptions, the right assortment, sizes, and competitive price points to stand out among the crowd and modify their positioning, given each retailer’s consumer base and assorted competitive brands.

    Optimizing the Digital Shelf and leading Share of Search for page one across all retail websites isn’t achievable overnight, but it is never too early or too late to start, given the 24/7 visibility your products have online. When it comes to Halloween candies, confectionery brands must consider many factors when differentiating their online positioning, such as finding the ‘sweet spot’ for pricing, size, and variety within each product offered, and knowing the right and wrong times to drive promotions. Additional elements to consider when introducing seasonal candies include cannibalization of non-holiday inventory, which can increase spoilage for aged inventory, or if holiday items are successful, could cause an abundance of markdown items to be sold before replacement inventory can be ordered.

    To better understand what retailers are doing—or should be doing—to optimize their Halloween holiday sales, we turned to our DataWeave Digital Shelf Analytics data to answer these questions:

    • Which brands and products are dominating “Share of Search” page one results across all three retailer websites?
    • How do discounts and promotions vary among candy brands and retailers?
    • How does each retailer use Halloween-specific and ‘variety’ labeling within the product descriptor to differentiate their holiday season assortment?
    • What sizes of candy packages is each retailer offering, and how does this play out in online positioning?

    Winning Candy Brands

    Which Halloween candies are people searching for—and presumably buying? Our data shows that Hershey’s branded candies achieved the greatest page one ‘Share of Search’ results across all three retailers’ websites—Albertson’s, Kroger and Safeway. This was unsurprising, given their total SKU count as well as the brand loyalty Hershey’s steadily maintains throughout the year. There is a high likelihood of consumers buying what they see on page one, so in our analysis, Hershey’s has the best chance of ‘winning’ this holiday season within all three of these retail channels. 

    That said, looking more specifically at how candy items are labeled and bundled adds another layer of insight to how candy brands are performing at each of these retailers.

    Historically speaking, Snickers is almost always within the top five confectionery brands sold during the Halloween season, but with the migration of more consumers shopping online, Mars may be leaving opportunity on the table this year. Our data shows that Snickers had the lowest Share of Search percentage on page one results on Safeway.com and Albertson’s.com for brands carrying 8 or more SKUs each, indicating they will most likely not make the first page results—and therefore may end up as a clearance item after Halloween if relying on online promotional efforts to achieve sales goals.

    Source: DataWeave’s Digital Shelf Analytics Solution: Data aggregated from 9/14/21-9/24/21 for Albertson’s.com and Kroger.com, and 9/17-9/24 for Safeway.com; Analysis was conducted reviewing product information for items falling within the ‘Halloween Candy’ listing category

    What Size Candy Packages Are Retailers Carrying/Betting On?

    For example, Albertsons.com and Safeway.com’s assortment includes 124 SKUs and 108 SKUs respectively with most of those items falling within the 5 to 16-ounce (averaging 25 percent) and 32 to 64-ounce (averaging 29 percent) sizes, Kroger.com is betting on a ‘smaller is better’ strategy, with a majority (63 percent) of their candies sold in the 5 to 16-ounce package size. 

    The average Hershey candies available through all three retailers happen to be much greater in size and price point, on average, than other top ranked items, and while these larger items appear to mostly be variety packs, a majority are not labeled as ‘Halloween’ candy.

    Source: DataWeave’s Digital Shelf Analytics Solution: Data aggregated from 9/14/21-9/24/21 for Albertson’s.com and Kroger.com, and 9/17-9/24 for Safeway.com; Analysis was conducted reviewing product information for items falling within the ‘Halloween Candy’ listing category

    How Important Is Halloween-Specific Branding?

    Our data shows that Kroger.com included the name ‘Halloween’ within the product description for most (around 80 percent) of the candies sized 16 ounces or smaller, and overall have labeled more than two-thirds of their total candy items sold as ‘Halloween.’ This indicates they are staged well for the peak of the seasonal demand and anticipate their shoppers to buy smaller unit sizes, comparatively speaking.

    Source: DataWeave’s Digital Shelf Analytics Solution: Data aggregated from 9/14/21-9/24/21 for Albertson’s.com and Kroger.com, and 9/17-9/24 for Safeway.com; Analysis was conducted reviewing product information for items falling within the ‘Halloween Candy’ listing category

    Taking a closer look at all items positioned as ‘Halloween’ across the three retailer websites, Hershey’s brand Reese’s is set for success at Kroger.com for total Share of Search percentage, considering they carry eight Reese’s, non-variety SKUs. Competing in the audience of others leading with variety packs indicates the weight the Reese’s brand carries and also indicates they will also have a great likelihood of success for increased sales this Halloween season. 

    Mars M&M’s brand came out on top at Safeway.com and Albertsons.com within the ‘Halloween’ labeled SKUs, but a majority (around 70 percent) of these are variety packs that leads with the M&M’s brand versus an M&M’s only bag.

    Source: DataWeave’s Digital Shelf Analytics Solution: Data aggregated from 9/14/21-9/24/21 for Albertson’s.com and Kroger.com, and 9/17-9/24 for Safeway.com; Analysis was conducted reviewing product information for items falling within the ‘Halloween Candy’ listing category

    How Much (Less) Are People Paying for Halloween Candy?

    To determine whether candy promotions are increasing Share of Search, DataWeave measured the average promotional discount these retailers and top candy brands are offering online. When looking only at brands offering discounts on 100% of the SKUs they carry within each retailer, Brach’s brand is performing best on Albertson’s.com, and Hershey products are positioned at the top for Kroger.com and Safeway.com. 

    Source: DataWeave’s Digital Shelf Analytics Solution: Data aggregated from 9/14/21-9/24/21 for Albertson’s.com and Kroger.com, and 9/17-9/24 for Safeway.com; Analysis was conducted reviewing product information for items falling within the ‘Halloween Candy’ listing category

    Do Consumers Search For ‘Variety’ Candy Bags, or One-Product-Only Bags?

    DataWeave tagged the word ‘variety’ and found that across all three retailers’ websites, non-variety candy bags take up a greater overall Share of Search than ‘variety’ bags. Either this isn’t an important search word or retailers could try adding ‘variety’ to product descriptions to increase Share of Search.

    Source: DataWeave’s Digital Shelf Analytics Solution: Data aggregated from 9/14/21-9/24/21 for Albertson’s.com and Kroger.com, and 9/17-9/24 for Safeway.com; Analysis was conducted reviewing product information for items falling within the ‘Halloween Candy’ listing category

    Time to Make a Change

    Getting products to page one on retailers’ websites can improve sales by as much as 50 percent, but determining the right levers to pull to get there is no easy feat. Based on our preliminary analysis of Halloween insights, our advice to confectionery brands this Halloween season is to invest now to increase visibility to the fast-changing market, to get orders right and on time, establish effective pricing and promotional plans, and get the right candies in stock, to the right locations. Retailers able to get an end-to-end view of the online competitive landscape will be able to make calculated marketing decisions that stand to help generate growth and profitability.

    We are now within the prime Halloween shopping season, given that 55 percent of candy sales usually happen in the last two weeks of October (According to Timothy LeBel, President of U.S. Sales for Mars Wrigley). With online sales still growing as consumers have shifted their comfort level in buying more online, retailers should be looking for ways to optimize their product positioning, increase their Share of Search, to improve the likelihood of consumers ordering their brand’s candy to ply those Trick-or-Treaters knocking on their doors.

    About DataWeave

    DataWeave is a leading provider of advanced sales optimization solutions for e-commerce businesses, consumer brands and marketplaces. The AI-driven proprietary technology and language-agnostic platform aggregates consumable and actionable Competitive Intelligence across 500+ billion data points globally, in 25+ languages, with insights to performance for more than 400,000 brands across 1,500+ websites tracked across 20+ verticals, to ensure online performance is always optimized.

  • [INFOGRAPHIC] 2020: The Year the World Navigated Uncertainty Together

    [INFOGRAPHIC] 2020: The Year the World Navigated Uncertainty Together

    The start of 2020 brought with it the promise of global economic growth. Markets in the US were on a steady rise we also witnessed demand from brands and retailers in Europe and the Middle East. All seemed to be on track to make it a year of plenty.

    Out of nowhere, the end of the first quarter saw the world coming to a grinding halt. The world was held hostage by a global pandemic and the force with which we were hit, was unprecedented.

    From February to mid-May we saw things come to a sharp halt. We at DataWeave seized this intermittent downtime to bolster our product offerings.

    On the flip side, when the world did start opening May onwards, we saw completely new categories take center stage digitally. With new habits and trends taking shape, the pandemic single-handedly caused exceptional growth in the Food and Grocery Delivery intermediaries. Predictably, the rest of the world followed. Our existing customers saw the competition rise steeply with everyone coming online. We invested substantially in our Digital Shelf Analytics solutions after noticing that e-commerce was seeing a boom. 2020 saw brands making their online presence the new norm. This meant that small, medium and large enterprises had to now divert their spending to analytics and e-commerce. 

    It is interesting to note that the rise in the food and grocery delivery segment gave brands another channel to focus on vis a vis their presence. Brands that were available on these sites focused on how they could optimize their sales on these channels, which proved to be the front runners during the height of the pandemic. While the challenges and opportunities for both these segments overlapped and seemed similar, our solutions helped measure and optimize brand performance across all online channels. Some of the in-demand solutions and analytics we saw our customers use were; share of search, content audit, assortment and availability, pricing and promotions, and ratings and reviews. 

    There were mixed emotions in the market, with regard to the best use of marketing spends. Human resource and client cutbacks happened across the board. At DataWeave however, we had the pleasure of onboarding 25 new clients including retailers and brands ranging from food and grocery delivery, home improvement from across multiple geographies.

    Infographics

    Throughout the year, the work never ceased at DataWeave. The team showed incredible resilience while working remotely, making sure our deliverables were being taken care of, at all times. Due to the e-commerce boom and immense pressure from existing and new entrants in the digital space, our clients saw a need to gather more insights. With the given uptick, we are happy to report that our stellar 95%+ accuracy record for in-depth insights at scale, was maintained through the course of all the work done.

    Looking forward to the year 2021:

    In the US, the adoption of e-commerce accelerated as traditional brick and mortar stores shut down and pivoted. To put things into perspective, e-commerce adoption grew only by 4.3% from 2014 to 2019. In just three months in 2020, e-commerce adoption grew at 4.3%! Add to that, with approved vaccines making their way slowly to the public, we do anticipate the travel sector to open up and we look forward to working with new clients.

    Nike’s Chief Executive, John Donahoe recently said, ” We know that digital is the new normal. The consumer today is digitally grounded and simply will not revert back…the shift to online sales could be a permanent trend.” We could not agree more! With online sales here to stay, brand and retailers’ requirements to keep their competitive edge will only continue to grow. We at DataWeave, look forward to delivering the results they want in this new year, and for the years to come.

  • Coronavirus Outbreak: Impact on E-Commerce Retailers and Consumer Brands

    Coronavirus Outbreak: Impact on E-Commerce Retailers and Consumer Brands

    The Coronavirus, otherwise known as COVID-19, has made landfall on U.S. shores. At the time of writing this article, there are over 230 confirmed cases in the country and 12 deaths. The growing unease about the virus, which has quickly accumulated 95,000+ confirmed cases globally, has, among other things, adversely affected businesses and stock markets the world over.

    In the wake of this outbreak, U.S. based retailers and brands would be prudent to brace themselves and plan ahead to minimize disruptions as much as possible.

    Businesses and consumers in China, the global epicenter of the epidemic, have been dealing with these challenges over the last couple of months. It’s likely that some of the trends observed in China would be mimicked in the U.S. as well, something that domestic retailers and brands would do well to study and prepare for.

    The Inadvertent E-commerce Wave

    When the outbreak happened in China, it caused an uptick in e-commerce adoption as shoppers were reluctant to step out of their homes and instead, opted to shop for their goods online.

    Reports indicate that Chinese online retailer JD.com’s online grocery sales grew 215% YoY over a 10-day period between late January and early February. Similarly, Carrefour’s vegetable deliveries grew by 600% YoY during the Lunar New Year period. Online sales of Dettol, a disinfectant produced by Reckitt Benckiser, rose 643% YoY between 10 February and 13 February on China’s Suning.com.

    In Singapore, another region affected by the virus more recently than in China, Lazada’s grocery arm, RedMart, and Supermarket chain, NTUC FairPrice, both reported an unprecedented surge in demand, which tested their delivery capabilities to the limit.

    This bump in online sales isn’t just restricted to grocery, but other categories as well. Jean-Paul Agon, CEO of L’Oréal, recently said that online sales of the brand’s beauty products increased in China in February.

    Given such a consistent shift in shopping behavior across coronavirus-affected regions, it’s logical to expect that a similar trend would be followed in the U.S. – in fact, it might already be underway.

    A recent survey by Coresight Research indicated that 27.5% of U.S. respondents are avoiding public areas at least to some extent, and 58% plan to if the outbreak worsens. Of those who have altered their routines, more than 40% say they are “avoiding or limiting visits to shopping centers/ malls” and more than 30% are avoiding stores in general. The survey also found consumers will likely begin to avoid restaurants, movie theaters, sporting events and other entertainment venues.

    Therefore, it’s essential for U.S. retailers and brands to swiftly energize their e-commerce readiness and be fully prepared to cater to the circumstances-induced shift in shopping behavior, inclined toward online.

    A Logistical Nightmare

    The most obvious area of impact for retailers and brands is in their supply chain and order fulfilment operations.

    A large portion of consumer product manufacturers rely to some extent on China, and the potential impact of the virus on supply chain processes is inescapable. Chinese factories have been operating at partial capacity, impacting supply chains globally. This has largely affected highly popular e-commerce categories like consumer electronics, fashion and furniture.

    Shares in the U.S. of furniture e-commerce retailer, Wayfair, fell as much as 26% toward the end of February, according to a Bloomberg report. The is particularly revealing, as the online retailer reportedly relies on China for half of its merchandise.

    Retailers struggling to cope with this stress in their supply chain systems would do well to warn their customers beforehand about delays in deliveries, like AliExpress has just done.

    For categories like CPG, as consumers increasingly shop online, retailers that offer Buy Online Pick Up In Store (BOPIS), should expect a surge in its adoption, and reinforce their online infrastructure and in-store operations to cater to the rising demand.

    In addition to disruptions in the supply chain, several other mission-critical areas are likely to get affected too.

    Keeping Up With The Online Surge

    As with any event of this magnitude, the business implications reach far and wide. The following are a few areas that we’ve identified as critical, based on our experience working with retailers and brands. Being aware of and focusing on these issues are likely to alleviate some of the issues faced by consumers today.

    Fair pricing: There have been several reports of price gouging on e-commerce platforms. Examples include 2-ounce Purell bottles being sold for $400 and face masks for up to $20. While these prices have mostly been set by third party merchants, brands are likely to face the flak from consumers. A recent Bloomberg article reported that online retailers still rely partly on employees to manually monitor these items. This approach has obvious limitations, such as products quickly reappearing on the website after being de-listed. Brands and e-commerce platforms will need to explore automated ways of controlling their online pricing practices at large scale.

    3P merchant and counterfeit management: Often, unauthorized third-party merchants selling an original manufacturer’s goods are the ones who unreasonably inflate prices. These merchants tend to test the markets on online marketplaces with their pricing, which adversely affects the brand image of the manufacturer. Further still, they sometimes list counterfeit or fake goods that make incorrect or extravagant claims. Brands will need to swiftly identify and de-list these merchants from online marketplaces.

    Ensuring stock availability: During times like these, it’s a common sight to see empty aisles at supermarkets selling items like canned food, water, paper products and personal care products. Consumers will benefit from brands monitoring their stock availability at stores, which will help them better align their supply chain operations to the rapidly changing demand patterns across the U.S. map. This way, efforts can be more targeted at regions with severe shortages.

    Content compliance: Helium 10, a technology provider for Amazon sellers, reported that since 26 February, 90% of searches on Amazon are coronavirus related, and searches for hand sanitizers spiked to 1.5 million searches in February compared to 90,000 in November. As a result, to arrest exploitative practices, some online marketplaces have announced policy guidelines on product content claiming health benefits. Words like ‘Coronavirus‘, ‘COVID-19‘, ‘Virus‘ and ‘epidemic’ are, in fact, prohibited.  Amazon has already de-listed several merchants claiming fraudulent cures. Ebay has gone as far as to ban all new listings for face masks, hand sanitizers, and disinfecting wipes, due to regulatory restrictions. In this context, retailers and brands will benefit from deploying tracking mechanisms that quickly identify offenders.

    The areas of business presented above are by no means a comprehensive list for retailers and brands to rely on during this time. Still, these are critical impact areas for them to address, even as huge efforts are made toward managing highly stressed supply chains.

    DataWeave Offers Support

    The coronavirus outbreak is likely to get worse before it gets better. As we enter unchartered territories, DataWeave is offering to contribute in small ways, pro bono, by leveraging our expert talent and competitive intelligence technology platform, to address some of the challenges faced by retailers and brands.

    We’re announcing a limited-time, no-cost offer to detect and report on price gouging, the presence of unauthorized third-party merchants, as well as stock availability across U.S. ZIP-codes. This offer will be valid for 4-6 weeks (timeline will be flexible based on how the outbreak develops) and limited to monitoring the top 10 U.S. online marketplaces, as well as critical product categories such as medicinal and hygiene-related products, emergency food items, survival-related products, fuel, etc.

    Reach out to us for further details.

  • [INFOGRAPHIC] 2019 at DataWeave: Blazing New Trails

    [INFOGRAPHIC] 2019 at DataWeave: Blazing New Trails

    As another year comes to a close, we look back at 2019 with fond memories and look forward to the exciting new prospects of 2020. Take a trip with us as we highlight some of DataWeave’s milestones of the last twelve months.

    Over the course of the year, DataWeave’s success has gone hand in hand with the evolution of retail and e-commerce, reinforcing the relevance of our technology platform.

    Our rapid growth in the North American market is a reflection of how intense competition in the region is triggering the need for accurate, timely, and actionable competitive and market insights, as well as other avenues for retailers and brands to gain a competitive edge.

    Last year, we saw a resurgence of big-box (omnichannel) retailers as they adopted innovative approaches to play to their strengths (their offline stores). Offering buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS) or click-and-collect options, rolling out price match guarantee programs, and expanding their partnerships with delivery services like Instacart, enabled these retailers to leverage the best of both the online and offline worlds to compete with e-commerce firms.

    Amazon continues to dominate e-commerce with a daunting 38% share in the US. Still, the partnerships between brands and Amazon are increasingly being tested. Nike and Ikea recently joined the likes of Swatch and Birkenstock to sever ties with the retail behemoth. This seemingly growing trend is largely due to counterfeits continuing to leak through the system.

    Brands that used to de-prioritize their focus on their eCommerce channel (as it often was only a small portion of their revenues) have come to realize that consumers use large marketplaces like Amazon not just to shop for products but also to perform product research. As a result, how these brands are represented and sold online impact their offline sales. And with the onset of BOPIS and click-and-collect initiatives, brands can now analyze this correlation even at a hyperlocal (ZIP-code) level.

    Large marketplaces, for their part, have started taking advantage of the increasingly brand-agnostic shopping behavior of consumers by launching ad-platforms for brands and manufacturers, enabling them to boost their visibility online.

    Due to such sweeping transformations to the market landscape, brands and retailers are increasingly looking more toward intelligent tech-based solutions to help them gain a competitive edge.

    In order to effectively serve the growing need for competitive and market insights, we’ve pushed our platform to its limits and beyond. It’s our constant endeavor to innovate and improve. This is evident with the launch of a host of new features on our product suite, especially Brand Analytics – designed to enable consumer brands to protect their brand equity and optimize e-commerce performance.

    One of the key factors that enabled us to achieve all the milestones we did is the aggressive hiring of some of the most skilled talent in the tech industry. Our team grew by 44% in 2019, giving us additional confidence to raise the bar on our capabilities and offer 95% accuracy in our data and insights to our customers consistently.

    We’re encouraged by the fact that we’ve more than doubled as a business, year-over-year, for the past several years, without depending solely on growing the team, but also by consolidating our technology stack, optimizing our processes, and scaling our products.

    Here’s a sneak peek into our performance in 2019:

    2020 Vision

    The upcoming year promises to be an exciting one for the retail industry and the consumer brand space at large. We plan to be at the helm and increase our footprint all around. There’s a strong focus to expand our US team and consequently, the business. While we continue to strengthen our roots in India, we will look toward other mature markets like the UK, Germany and the Middle East as well.

    On other fronts, we’re gathering steam on new partnership engagements – consulting firms, ad tech firms, marketing agencies and complementary technologies. We will also expand our foray into the travel and delivery services verticals.

    With our diversifying portfolio, we haven’t lost sight of one of the most important aspects of any successful company – its employees. We will continue to keep our employees engaged, motivated, and satisfied by providing vertical and horizontal career growth opportunities, conducting personalized training programs, organizing hackathons, fostering cross-team collaboration and learning, and encouraging everyone to periodically blow off some steam at company retreats and the ferociously fought in-house sports tournaments.

    Here’s to a stellar 2020 of empowered retailers and brands. We wish them well as they navigate the dense competitive landscape, knowing that they have an ally in their corner with DataWeave.

  • 2018 at DataWeave: A Year of Prolific Success and Growth

    2018 at DataWeave: A Year of Prolific Success and Growth

    As we enter 2019, in the backdrop of DataWeave’s unprecedented growth and success, we decided to take a breath and look back at some of the highlights of our progress over the last 12 months.

    DataWeave’s growth through the year has been complemented and influenced by the evolution of the retail sector, reinforcing the relevance of our technology platform.

    Amazon continued to dominate the online retail landscape, now commanding a staggering 49% of US e-commerce. At the same time, several large retailers have taken sure-footed strides toward establishing a stronger e-commerce presence, which places them head to head against the Seattle-based retail behemoth. As a result, competitive intelligence is no longer a “good-to-have” but is fundamental to the survival and growth of both traditional and new-age retailers, enabling them to devise smarter, data-driven competitive strategies.

    Consumer brands are continuing to figure out the dynamics of selling on online marketplaces, which happens to give them valuable access to a vast base of shoppers while simultaneously restricting their ability to influence the brand experience. In their quest to sell more through the e-commerce channel, while trying to safeguard the brand experience and loyalty, consumer brands have turned increasingly toward e-commerce performance platforms to augment their decision-making process.

    These trends have reinforced our confidence in our technology platform, which aggregates and analyzes data from the Web at massive scale to deliver actionable competitive insights, as we’re well poised to address the evolving challenges presented to retailers and brands today.

    In 2019, there are no signs of slowing down for DataWeave.

    We will continue to execute strongly in high-growth regions, and especially in the US, which has, in a span of two years, become the largest revenue generating region for DataWeave. We will also build a stronger footing in Europe, with specific focus on the UK market.

    With time, our historical repository of data increases in volume and granularity, which enables us to better serve the maturing space of Alternative Data. We have already witnessed highly encouraging inbound interest over the last year, and we expect this interest to rise significantly moving forward.

    With great success, comes the need for great people. In 2019, we will aggressively expand our team across functions, organization levels, and regions. As always, DataWeave is on the lookout for people who flourish in a competitive environment and can propel us to the next stage of growth.

    Our technology platform never ceases to impress in its ability to aggregate and analyze billions of data points accurately each day. As our pipeline swells and we onboard bigger and more diverse customers, the platform will consistently be pushed to its limits, driving further innovations and improved efficiency.

    Over the following 12 months, on the strength of all the lessons learnt and successes achieved in 2018, we look forward to another challenging year of empowering retailers and consumer brands to compete profitably in the new world order.

    Watch this space for more on DataWeave through the year!

  • [INFOGRAPHIC] 2017 at DataWeave: A Year in Retrospect

    [INFOGRAPHIC] 2017 at DataWeave: A Year in Retrospect

    And that’s a wrap! Another exciting year done and dusted, in which DataWeave continued to execute strongly through accelerated revenue growth, new customer wins, and expansion to heretofore unchartered regions.

    Through the year, we engaged with retailers and consumer brands of all types and sizes, and our belief that actionable competitive insights will increasingly play a defining role in driving profitable growth in retail was reinforced. Competition was stiff, and more times than not, we came out on top due to our ability to process huge data-sets, and the unmatched accuracy of our insights.

    Encouragingly, the emerging vertical of Alternative Data gained greater maturity, as adoption of non-traditional data sources from the Web by Asset Managers picked up steam.

    Our extensive focus on the North American market yielded impressive results, and we’ve only just scratched the surface.

    Other regions and verticals continued to contribute significantly, helping us close out the year with record sale volumes.

    As we wind ourselves up again for another marathon year in 2018, we look back at some of our achievements across the board, including customer impact, technology leadership, and team contribution and growth:

    Moving into 2018, we have a lot to look forward to.

    We’ll roll out a new and improved version of our SaaS-based data visualization platform, built with greater focus on actionability and customizability for our customers. Feedback from early beta tests have already been promising.

    As our team size swells, we’ll be on the lookout for passionate problem solvers, who thrive in a hyper-competitive environment, to join us and contribute to the next stage of our growth journey.

    Across verticals, we are well on our way to digging our heels into the North American market. 2018 will also see us gain a more solid footing in the Alternative Data space.

    With eCommerce adoption showing no sign of slowing down, demand in retail for competitive intelligence solutions is set to soar, and our proprietary data aggregation and analysis platform is up to the challenge of catering to this growing need.

    Stay tuned for more from DataWeave in 2018!