Connecting retail demand planning to campaign and store execution

Retail teams often struggle to align decisions across disconnected systems when reviewing sales, inventory, traffic, and delivery KPIs alongside demand forecasts and campaign plans. Databricks demonstrated a single application that consolidates these steps, enabling stakeholders to review performance, plan demand, activate audiences, coordinate store execution, and measure outcomes. The application is built on data unification, governance, and intelligence, ensuring teams work from a shared foundation while maintaining role-specific access and automated decision support. This addresses the challenge of reconciling separate views across point-of-sale, loyalty, supply chain, media spend, inventory, and store operations data.

The workflow begins with a performance overview for executives and planners, allowing them to examine KPIs, monthly sales trends, and category performance. Users can drill into top movers and underperformers, with detailed views explaining the drivers behind the numbers. A map view provides store-level analysis, linking overall KPIs to specific stores, categories, and products needing attention. This structured approach helps teams identify issues and prioritize actions without relying on fragmented data sources.

Demand planning is integrated with campaign activation through forecast-versus-actual analysis, enabling practitioners to assess divergence rates, volatility, and gaps over rolling four-month windows. The application supports what-if scenarios, allowing merchandisers to adjust business levers like discounts and observe projected impacts on replenishment, audience reach, units, revenue, and other KPIs. Marketing decisions are informed by demand signals, with an audience wizard recommending campaigns such as food storage recovery initiatives, guiding users through defining intent, KPIs, audience segments, spend, and creative details before activation.

Store execution is streamlined with a mobile view for managers, including restocking tasks, price-tag updates, and campaign-related promotions, while associates receive checklists and track completed work. The application surfaces operational recommendations tied to broader campaigns, ensuring alignment across planners, marketers, and store teams. Performance measurement closes the loop, allowing users to review campaign metrics like recovery velocity, ROAS by tactic, and featured-store insights, connecting campaign activity back to sales and operational outcomes.