The Value of Enterprise Dashboards for Retailers 

In an evolving industry landscape, your convenience stores’ success depends on your ability to quickly see, analyze, and respond to business challenges. However, if you manage different areas of business across multiple platforms, it can be difficult to decide which areas need your focus, or where you might be missing the ‘big picture’. Which items, categories, or stores are making the most profit, and when? Are there additional upsell or discounting activities your store can be taking advantage of at certain times of the year?  

Centralized business data empowers c-store managers to quickly gauge the health of each business area and apply successful strategies to other areas of the organization. Enterprise dashboards are typical features of a modern Enterprise Resource Platform (ERP), allowing you to view all your stores’ information in one place. 

With an enterprise dashboard, c-store managers can act on key insights such as category movement and item performance, which can support pricing decisions and product placement. Centralized reporting on items that are frequently sold together can inform upcoming cross-product promotions and help predict inventory levels to prepare for proactive replenishment.  

There are four key considerations when choosing the ideal dashboard platform for your stores: 

• User Experience – With such a wealth of business data and insights, user experience is key in choosing a dashboard. Dashboards should allow you to easily digest your stores’ most important information up front, on one screen. Everything you need to make decisions, root out issues, and monitor performance should be available in one place.  
  
• Real-Time Data – The ability for a dashboard to display business insights in real-time allows c-store management to focus time on the most pressing issues. Immediate notifications, alerting you to issues such as low inventory, let you better prioritize what you want to tackle and when. The ability to conditionally format metrics, such as major supplier price changes, and set up real-time email alerts allows you to understand immediately where action is needed.  
  
• Integrations – An effective dashboard should allow you to bring in and analyze information from other programs on a single screen. If your software program stores information in an industry standard database such as MySQL, MSSQL, Oracle, XML, ODBC-compliant, DB2, MS Access, your dashboard tools should apply to that program as well. 
  
• Customizability – Another aspect of an effective dashboard is customizability. Users should be able to create custom reports, where you can drag and drop fields and apply any desired filters. Query builders and navigation should allow managers to create additional charts and graphs. After custom reports are built, the dashboard should be able to export and send reports in a versatile manner, through PDFs, Excel, or direct emails.  

Your profitability and competitive advantage rests on your team’s ability to see and analyze your data. Employing an enterprise dashboard will allow your convenience stores to stay ahead of the pack and act upon the latest business insights. Does your back-office system contain such an enterprise dashboard? 

A software solution should allow you to make efficient and effective business decisions. iRely is an innovative software partner serving the c-store and petroleum industry for over 35 years. Our software solutions help convenience stores simplify core business processes within a single, easy-to-use system, customized to meet your needs. To learn more about iRely’s convenience store product and features tailored to the retail and broader petroleum distribution industries, click here.