All About Retailer Data

Default Retailer

Every Avantalytics account has a "default retailer." Well what does that mean? Because most insight panels are retailer-specific, having a default retailer basically means that your account will tell each insight panel to automatically load data for your default retailer when you drag and drop a new insight panel onto your view. It is very easy to both ascertain and change your default retailer by looking at the navigation bar at the top of the Avantalytics website, which looks like this:

If you look along the navigation bar, you can see that our worker, Joe Jenkins, has Home Depot set as his default retailer. Any time Joe drags and drops a new insight panel onto a view, the data that loads will be for Home Depot, unless he goes into the gear setting and changes the retailer in the options, which is usually one of the first metrics listed on any gear setting:

What if you want to look at multiple retailers? What if you are in a sales department that works primarily or entirely with a different retailer or retailers other than the one you have set as your default retailer on your account? Not to worry, Avantalytics has you covered! Changing your default retailer is as simple as clicking on a drop down menu and selecting a different retailer:

Being able to quickly look at multiple retailers or to build a view that centers around a retailer that is not your default retailer takes a bit more work, but fortunately it's all up-front work that ends up saving you time later. To build a view that looks at a non-default retailer, check out this helpful tutorial here.

To build a view that looks at multiple retailers at once, check out our tutorial on how to build a multi-retailer view.

Best Practices

Here are a few fast tips for getting the most out of retailer data with your insight panels.

1. You are allowed to have up to 24 different item categories for EACH retailer. So if you change your default retailer, the names and amount of your categories may change if you set your categories up to be retailer-specific
2. For panels that measure time, the smaller the window of time you specify, the faster the load. Find out the smallest window of time each of the retailers you work with uses, and set insight panels to the shortest time period they allow for the fastest possible load time.
3. If you are introducing related products into new markets, any map-style insight panel will be extremely helpful in tracking your data. Learn more by checking out our page on our State Sales Heat Map.

Retailer Week-End Dates

Each retailer sets their own work-week and those can begin and end on different days from one another, which is important to keep in mind when comparing sales data. Do your dates line up? Below is a handy table that lists common big-box retailers' week-end dates.

Retailer Data Portal Names

Each retailer has its own proprietary data system, and it's helpful to know the names of these portals. Below is a handy table listing common big-box retailers and the names of their data portals.