Muffin Data users have access to a clean, customizable set of dashboards for their brand's retail data. This data is derived from retailer and distributor data sources that you're already familiar with, but automatically pulled into the Platform and transformed into useful, easy dataset. This process takes place in three steps:
Integration
The Muffin Data Platform automatically connects to a large and growing list of data sources for common retailers and distributors. When you connect a new data source, the Platform grabs all historical activity from that data source (e.g., all sales by store and product for a given retailer). The Platform also captures new data whenever it updates in the data source -- so you never need to go into a retailer portal to grab recent data again.
Transformation
When data is retrieved from a data source, it is thoughtfully transformed and normalized into a clean, useful dataset. You know how each of your SKUs has a slightly different name in each retailer portal, and you're stuck mapping everything to the "standard" name with a VLOOKUP in Excel? We handle each of these situations and more in the transformation layer:
Product standardization. All product data points in Muffin Data can be segmented by the data source name or the standardized values associated with that product -- name, SKU, product line, and more.
Location standardization. All location data points in Muffin Data are automatically enriched with complete addresses and categorized into a chain and reporting account.
Casepack vs. unit product connections. Standardized Muffin Data products can be associated with casepacks or shippers, enabling reporting at the case-, GTIN-, or UPC level as per your use case.
Combined performance across all data sources. Overall performance can be viewed at the data source level or all at once.
Baseline volume, for supported data sources. The above standardizations enable the detection of baseline vs. incremental volume at the store and product level, which can be used as an input to your brand's forecast, or as a way to measure promo performance.
Visualization
Finally, all Muffin Data integrations land in your brand's Analytics tab as a standard set of dashboards and reports:
Your team has the ability to drill down into these dashboards to filter for a specific product, or group by the chain selling that product. Importantly: your team can also build any dashboard to answer a question, and save it right there in the app!
All three components above are crucial for delivering a simple, useful Platform experience -- and we think this approach is key to providing the best and simplest CPG analytics solution.