Weather Monitor
Avantalytics provides integrated weather data as an add-on service, because we realize that weather can have an outsized impact for many suppliers in the retail space. Whether it's colder-than-normal temperatures driving sales of winter clothing or heavy rain drowning out Mother's Day weekend garden center sales, weather has an impact. From an analytics perspective, it is important not only to monitor weather as it's happening, but also to be able refer back to the actuals impact and post-mortem analyses. Many of our insights are designed to provide you with year-over-year differential comparisons, because we understand that a good weekend last year vs. a rainy weekend this year can have an even greater impact on sales and can lead to skewed comparisons.
We capture and store weather data for every zip code in the country each day. We store this information to allow you to include it in your analysis and to help you better understand one of the most impactful factors to many clients business. Keep reading below to learn about the tools that are at your disposal and how to interpret the weather data most accurately and efficiently.
Sample Features
Weather Event Logging & Overlay
The picture above is a screenshot of one over of 100 analytic insights. When weather data is integrated with your POS data you can immediately take advantage of the weather event logging we perform in addition to standard fine grained weather data. The above screenshot is showing the gray line indicating a the duration of the weather event - in this case Hurricane Michael. The event overlay provides a clear indication of the impact of the hurricane upon sales both during the event and during the subsequent weeks for this data set. Whether your sales are driven or hindered by things like wildfires, "Arctic Blasts", floods, hurricanes, and more can easily be seen with our event overly feature in the weather analytics.
Days of Rain Analysis
In Q4 2018 Home Depot attributed their revenue miss to poor weather - primarily rain and cold. These types of statements always illicit critical responses ranging from those who say weather doesn't impact it to others who view it as the convenient "excuse du jour". With our weather analytics, you can put some proof to the extent of weather differences in less than 2 minutes. Below is a screenshot showing the usage of two "Days of Rain" maps - one with the time period set to represent Q4 2018 and the other with the same time period in the prior year. The map on the left is highlighted to show the large orange / yellow area across much of the Southeast - an area with some of the heaviest concentration of Home Depot locations. As shown - the number of rainy days was on average about 10 more during the quarter compared to the prior year. You can see the bad weather extended in to the Northeast as well, and even some areas of Western TX were more wet (though the store count is sparse at best in this region). With Avantalytics weather analytics - we do the heavy lifting on the data to allow you to perform quick analyses to understand what are the real factors affecting sales.
