In Pulse, you can now view key insights and information for each product you sell.
We understand that in retail, everything boils down to individual product performance. We wanted to develop a feature that answered important questions our customers had, such as:
“What is being bought with this product?“
“How important is this product to the store?“
“What price am I selling this product for, and how does that compare against the competition?“
“How much am I actually making on this product?“
All of these questions and more can be answered within this page.
Each product in each store has its own product page (example below). There is a lot of information on this page so the following guide explains what each section tells you about the product and why it may be useful.
Note: If you want to view any image in this article in more detail, you can right click the image and click 'View in new tab'.
How to get started
There are two ways you can get to an item's Product Page in Pulse:
1. The search bar
You can now search for a product in Pulse's search bar. You can search by product name, however the quickest way to find what you're looking for is to use the barcode or product ID. See below GIF for how to use the search bar
2. Clicking the 'View Products' link or icon in a grid
When you click into an Insight in Pulse, you will often see a small blue price tag icon in the last column to the right. If you click on this icon, it will open the item's product page in a new tab.
See the GIF below to see an example of this in action:
The Product Page
The product page gives you key performance indicators (KPIs) and additional information on the product you've selected. Below we'll go through each section (which you can see numbered in the image below), what it tells you and how to use it.
1. Product Detail Panel
This panel presents you with information about the product. Some of it is obvious based on the label, i.e. description, barcode, etc.
Below is a brief description of each line in the panel.
Description: The product description as found in your ePoS system.
Barcode: The product's barcode as in the ePoS system.
Supplier/Order Code: This is the Supplier/Order code as maintained on your ePoS system.
Category: The category this product belongs to in this store.
Last Sold: When this product was last sold in the store.
First Sold: When this product was first sold in the store.
Stock: How much stock of this product the store has. This could be positive or negative (ideally positive). If negative, it generally means that this product is being sold but has not been receipted into stock to begin with.
You can see in the example above that the stock position is -74 which means that the system cannot know if there is any stock in the store (although more than likely there is) due to the ongoing trading pattern.
Days Available: How many days of trading of this product are left before you can expect to run out of stock.
Note: when the stock position is negative, this number is incorrect.
Sales Included: It is possible to exclude given categories of products from overall sales figures - typically this is done on products like fuel in forecourts. However it is still possible to look at the actual performance of the individual products on the product screen.
This field lets you know whether the product you are currently looking at is included or excluded from overall sales figures.
Daily Sales Qty(Qtr): Pulse works out what your store's daily rate of sale is based on the last quarter's trading (quarter in this instance is the last 91 days of trading).
This is a very useful number as it can indicate popularity and the underlying importance of a product to the store.
Group Daily Sales Qty: If your store is part of a Franchise, Pulse can also tell you the daily rate of sale for this product on average in the franchise at large. A great way to make a comparison between your store's rate of sale, and benchmark against all other stores in the franchise. Like the Stores own Daily Sales Qty, this is based on the last 91 (quarter) days of trading.
2. Pricing Panel
This panel presents you with information about the product's price.
Price: The current price this product is being sold at in store, either based on the digital label (if you have digital labels), or the product price on your till system.
RSP: The Recommended Selling Price, where known. This usually (but not always) comes through from your ePoS system.
Average Price (LM): The average price charged on the product over the last month (LM).
Group Average Price (Franchise): The average price charged for this product across the Franchise.
Competitor Price: the latest max-price from a competitor (e.g. Tesco)
3. Ranking Panel
This panel presents you with information about the product's ranking within the store and its category. This ranking is based on the profitability of the product on an average daily basis.
Note: this is not how profitable a product is (i.e. it makes 50% margin), this is how much cash the this product makes every day.
Store Rank: How important is this product in the store.
Category Rank: How important is this product in its category.
4. Performance (YTD) Panel
This panel presents you with information about the performance of the product year-to-date (YTD).
Customers: How many baskets has this product been a part of, so far this year.
Sales Qty: The number of units sold of this product since the start of the year.
Sales (Gross): The gross sales value for this product - i.e. before VAT.
VAT: If VAT is applicable to the product, then this is the amount of VAT collected on this product year-to-date.
Sales (Nett): The nett sales value for this product - i.e. after VAT.
Cost Of Sales: The purchase cost based on the sales of this product so far this year.
Margin(Cash): The cash margin earned on this product so far this year. Basically Sales (Nett) minus Cost of Sales.
Margin%: The cash margin as a percentage of sales.
Waste Cost: The cost of any waste on this product - if any waste has occurred it will have a detrimental effect on the product's margin.
Adjusted Margin (Cash): The actual margin (cash) after any waste has been factored in.
Adjusted Margin %: The adjusted cash margin as a percentage of sales. I.e. after any waste has been factored in.
5. Electronic Labels Panel
If you have digital labels (ESLs) in your store, this panel presents an image of what is currently showing on the label. If you do not yet have digital labels, this section will be blank.
Label Image: This is a representation of what was on the label this morning.
More Detail: the retailer can select the “More Detail” button to get more information about the label, such as label ID etc.
Note: Pulse takes a snapshot of the label image each morning.
Note: Under the label image above is a 'last updated' indicator - this is the last time the label was updated.
6. Product Insights Panel
This panel presents simple insights about the product.
7. Sales Chart Tab
This tab presents a sales chart for the product.
You can see on the right of the chart is a legend (1). Notice how a lot of the legend entries are faded out. By selecting these faded entries you can turn on that series in the chart. For example, selecting basket count will display basket counts for this year on the chart see below for an example.
Initially the graph (2), presents sales by day (yellow bars) for the last 3 months and the sales last year for the same period (blue line).
It is also possible to change the time period you are looking. You do this by selecting the change button (3). See below for an example of how that works.
8. Cross-Group Tab
If your store is part of a multi-store group, then using the Cross-Group tab can give you a look to see if other stores in the group are also selling this product and how it is doing.
You can actually open up a new tab in the browser and view all the details of this product in the other store by selecting the “View“ option.
9. Campaigns Tab
Selecting the campaigns tab shows you all the campaigns the product has been a part of.
Selecting the view (1) option opens the campaign in a new tab.
10. Prices Tab
The prices tab is the place to come to when you want to view prices, and changes in prices, costs, margin, etc. over time.
You can also see your competitor's price here as well. Like the sales chart above, you can turn on and off measures by selecting and deselecting them in the legend (2).
You can also change the time period you are viewing by selecting the “Change Button” (1).
11. Bought With Tab
If you want to know what products are most frequently bought with this product, then this is where you can find out. Based on the selected time scale, Pulse presents the top 20 products bought with this item.
You can click the (1) View button to open the product page for that product in a new tab.
By default, this feature looks at the last month but of course you can change the time period using the 'change' button (2).
( 12 ) Heatmap Tab
The heatmap tab displays two charts: one for days of the week, and one for hours of the day. Based on the dates selected (defaults to last 3 months), it presents the average sales quantity of this product either for that day of the week or that hour of the day. This lets you see when you sell most of this product in your store.
13. Daily Transactions Tab
The Daily Transactions tab list the daily transactions for the product.
This tab displays based on the dates selected (in the above example 09 Apr 2020 to 07 May 2020) all of the transactions containing this product grouped by the dates they occurred. Expanding the date in the grid, you will see a list of each actual transaction including the transition ID (1), the time the sale was made, how much of this product was bought (Line Qty), the value of this product sold, the employee ID and then the total number of items in the basket, and the total value of the basket.
Like most of the grids presented in the product page, you can change the timescale you are looking at by selecting the 'Change' button (2).
What's Next?
We hope this guide helps you get started with this feature. The best thing to do from here is log in to your Pulse account and play around with product pages.
If you have any questions or feedback, we would love to hear from you. You can contact us by emailing support@markethub.ie.