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The challenges of working with POS data arise from the diverse ways retailers share that information with their suppliers. Retailers send different fields of information with different item codes, different time periods, different currencies, and different levels of summarization. Many use EDI standards, but even then there are many variations in how the transactions are assembled. Other retailers develop proprietary data formats or use web portals to distribute data to their vendors. So the first challenge is translating all these different data contents and formats into a common "normalized" data warehouse.
With all the variation in retailer data, the next challenge is finding commonalities that allow the information to be combined and analyzed. This means providing for data reported by some retailers but not others, and accounting for differing fiscal periods and levels of granularity- some might deliver information by store while others supply it by warehouse or for only the chain. Some report by their own item codes and others report by UPC. Velocity's powerful ETL features take care of all of this.
Other POS data warehousing or reporting applications leave the challenges of translating the EDI to your IT staff or IT service provider, meaning that you will need to research each retailer's idiosyncracies, prepare EDI translation maps, transform the differences between retailers, test with the application, and automate the process. Velocity handles all of it for you, not only for the POS data, but also item code cross-references, store lists (EDI 816), distributor warehouse withdrawals (EDI 867) and forecasts (EDI 830). In addition to the X.12 standard used in the U.S. and Canada, Velocity also processes international Tradacom and EDIFACT transactions. Velocity can handle over 200 retailers and distributors for you with more being added all the time.
When compiling data from many retailers, not only do you need to analyze by retailer, but also across retailers. This requires cross referencing of item codes, item hierarchies, stores, store clusters, and fiscal calendars. Each retailer has different categories and different DC alignments- you need to track these by retailer but you also have to accommodate your own fiscal calendar, item hierarchies, and store clustering. Most retailers report by week, but many are now reporting daily activity. Velocity manages all of these variations for you in its Data Warehouse or Demand Signal Repository (DSR).
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