Everything You Need to Know About Retail Intelligence

What is Retail Intelligence and what does it do?

Retail Intelligence is a solution that helps brands monitor and improve in-store performance by collecting real-time data from physical retail locations. It provides visibility into key execution metrics like product availability, display compliance, and shelf conditions, while also unlocking extended value through shopper sentiment, competitive benchmarking, and category-wide insights. This dual-layer approach gives brands the full picture of what’s happening at the shelf—and why.

Who is Retail Intelligence designed for?

Retail Intelligence is designed for brands, manufacturers, category managers, sales teams, and retail partners who need in-store visibility. It supports teams across sales, trade marketing, and operations who are responsible for improving retail performance and understanding how to improve the shoppers’ experience at the shelf to drive sales.

How does Retail Intelligence help improve retail execution and drive sales?

Retail Intelligence improves execution by identifying gaps in availability, promotion, and display compliance. But it doesn’t stop there. It also helps drive sales and category performance with shopper and competitive insights that help shape strategy, supporting better distribution, stronger shelf presence, and more effective promotion planning.

What types of data does Retail Intelligence collect—and how is it used?

The platform collects shelf-level execution data including:

• Product availability and out-of-stock (OOS) rates
• Planogram and display compliance
• Share of shelf and facing counts
• Promotional presence and pricing
• In-the-moment shopper sentiment
• Competitive product presence and pricing
• Category-wide performance indicators

This data is used to identify execution gaps, measure program impact, track brand health at retail, and inform better business decisions across sales, marketing, and category leadership.

What are the key benefits of using Retail Intelligence?

Retail Intelligence helps grow sales, improve promotional ROI, and increase visibility across your retail network. It enables teams to make faster, more informed decisions with confidence. But it also:

• Saves teams time and cost through scalable, crowdsourced coverage
• Captures insights field teams can’t easily collect—like shopper sentiment and category benchmarks
• Equips leaders with deeper visibility into performance drivers, not just performance metrics

How is Retail Intelligence different from traditional retail audits?

Traditional audits are periodic, limited in scale, and often outdated by the time they’re reviewed. Retail Intelligence provides scalable, continuous, and real-time data across thousands of stores. It replaces static snapshots with dynamic, action-ready insights, complete with shopper and competitor context.

Can Retail Intelligence be used for both in-store and online tracking?

Retail Intelligence is built for physical retail environments but pairs seamlessly with Digital Shelf Intelligence solutions. When used together, brands gain a full omnichannel view of execution and performance.

What kinds of insights can be generated from Retail Intelligence dashboards?

Retail Intelligence dashboards provide more than just visibility—they enable action. Users can create fully customized views of KPIs by retailer, region, product, or program. Dashboards include:

• Visual proof of execution (photos, shelf conditions, planogram compliance)
• Scorecards to benchmark performance by store or team
• Trend tracking to measure changes in availability, pricing, and promotion compliance over time
• Real-time alerts on out-of-stocks and violations
• Shopper sentiment and competitor feedback summaries
• Category-level performance benchmarks to contextualize your results

These tools help brands not only understand where gaps exist, but why they exist—and what actions to take.

What is a “Perfect Store” and how does Retail Intelligence support it?

A Perfect Store program defines the ideal conditions for how a product should appear at retail. Retail Intelligence supports Perfect Store execution by measuring real-world compliance against those standards and identifying gaps. It tracks whether key in-store elements—like displays, facings, and pricing—match brand expectations. Brands use this data to drive accountability and ensure a consistent, premium shopper experience.

What is Retail Intelligence software used for?

It’s used to:

• Monitor store-level retail execution
• Track and reduce out-of-stocks
• Ensure display and promotional compliance
• Analyze competitive presence and pricing
• Capture shopper sentiment at the shelf
• Support category leadership and strategy

Can Retail Intelligence improve product availability and reduce out-of-stocks?

Yes. The platform surfaces out-of-stocks and phantom inventory in real time—before they become visible in sales data. This enables teams to respond quickly, restock efficiently, and prevent lost sales. It also provides a competitive lens, showing how your availability stacks up against other brands on the shelf so you can identify distribution gaps and opportunities to win space.

Why is real-time retail data important?

Because the shelf is dynamic. Real-time data helps teams detect and correct issues before they impact sales—while also offering insights into how shoppers and competitors are behaving in the moment.

What retail metrics can I track with a Retail Intelligence platform?

• Out-of-stocks (OOS) and on-shelf availability
• Share of shelf and shelf health
• Display and promotional compliance
• Pricing and markdown tracking
• Planogram compliance
• Shopper sentiment and competitive assortment

Can Retail Intelligence help with merchandising compliance?

Yes. It captures whether merchandising standards are being met across retail locations, helping teams close gaps quickly.

Is Retail Intelligence useful for field teams?

Absolutely. Field reps use the data to prioritize visits, validate performance, and share visual proof. It also supplements their view with broader data from the crowd, capturing sentiment and competitor insights that can’t be collected store by store. Further, Wiser's Retail Execution Management solution is fully integrated, allowing seamless transition into the field with mobile data collection, team leaderboards, data integrations, and more.

How is Retail Intelligence different from planogram compliance tools?

Planogram tools compare shelf layouts to expected diagrams. Retail Intelligence goes beyond that—capturing real-world execution across stores, product conditions, and promotional activity, even when layouts vary.