NGA offers data analytics tool to independent grocers

The National Grocers Association aims to help independent supermarkets keep abreast of market trends and spur sales through a partnership with grocery retail and wholesale solutions specialist BRdata.

A new cloud-based tool called NGA Independent Insights powered by BRdata, launched this week, gives grocers a nationwide view of product and category trends among independents, enabling them to see which trending items they are underselling or not selling as well as which of their categories that are underperforming, NGA said.

NGA Independent Insights, too, offers vendors independent grocery-centric data rather than industrywide supermarket information, allowing them to assist grocers in merchandising and provide volume-based deals, NGA noted. Vendors also get a better view of the impact of promotions and item lift among independent partners.

“NGA Independent Insights powered by BRdata will provide our members with aggregated analytics to better negotiate with their CPG partners, which will in turn drive more promotions to their stores and discounts to shoppers, making independent community grocers competitive,” NGA President and CEO Greg Ferrara said in a statement. “This solution makes reams of important marketplace data digestible and easily accessible to grocery operators of any size. It’s yet another service that NGA is proud to offer to enhance the operations of our members.”

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Grocers can view data by region, category, item and other variables via the BRdata solution.

For example, NGA Independent Insights lets users drill down to top trends by region and state, with regional analytics based on Shelby Report market areas. Users also can compare trends among stores of similar sizes and in similar areas — such as suburban small city, urban and rural — and predict categories that will trend in the near term, according to NGA.

NGA Independent Insights works with almost all point-of-sale platforms, and setup quick and user-friendly, NGA reported. What’s more, independent grocers using the solution own their data.

“Installation can be done on any store server that can easily access daily transaction logs from the POS. The secure cloud-based solution can be run anywhere, with analytics accessible on any modern browser, Android or iOS device,” explained John Abbene, president of BRdata, based in Melville, N.Y. “BRdata is providing analytics aggregated from independent grocers while NGA acts as a partner. The platform runs on Microsoft Azure, an industry-leading secure cloud provider to keep data protected at rest and in transit,” he added.