Clear Demand machine learning is enabled by its Cloud deployment and solution architecture, which allows the massively parallel processing power and reliable infrastructure needed to respond to fast-changing market conditions.
Competition from digital retailers has changed the game, as has the challenge of aligning one’s own physical versus digital store prices on a much more rapid time scale.
Cloud Built
The present Clear Demand application is deployed in the Cloud, or as some say, “Software as a Service.” This enables the ability to distribute work across multiple services, providing linear processing performance and scalability. This is a deliberate strategic choice and a leap ahead of legacy “client-server architecture” which requires large, expensive server infrastructures.
By leveraging the reliability and elasticity of the Cloud, Clear Demand provides nearly unlimited scalability to meet the needs of any size retailer.
Locating Clear Demand in the Cloud enables rapid deployment and significant cost and performance benefits. Unlike competing solutions which box retailers in using existing hardware, our design allows us to rent machines as required.
Built for Tomorrow
Pricing systems have experienced a steep and accelerating climb in the number of records since they were introduced 15-20 years ago. Early systems were “small data,” batch-processed, and dependent upon low quantities of not very precise rules. Present requirements are reaching petabyte scale, with no sign of slowing down.
Clear Demand performs near-real-time analytics to let stores compete with online outfits that change fast, without setting up “a race to the bottom.” The solution allows retailers to set boundary conditions to prevent selling below cost and uses optimization algorithms to make up the margin difference on other products.
Empowering
Modern price management is far too intricate and fast-changing for humans to manage. Clear Demand uses “intelligent price management” that defines guardrails and relies upon Machine Learning. When an analyst asks for a strategy, the system identifies competitors and suggests potential rules.
This interactivity is made possible by “near-real-time science analytics.” It leverages the Cloud’s elasticity to keep the model in memory at all times. As a result, analysts can run quick price tests and what-ifs scenarios in real time. This capability is especially useful for evaluating trade deals with vendors and preserving the ability to make changes on the fly. Clear Demand provides a rich user interface for promotional tools.
Web Service
With Cloud-based systems that run too fast to exchange files using obsolete EDI protocols, how do you automate business to business processing? Clear Demand has defined interfaces that can talk across the internet. We recently implemented a fully integrated markdown solution with a large retailer using Web service automation. The retailer’s system posts an input data stream via a web service, and Clear Demand consumes the data, processes it, and posts the results back to the retailer automatically. As we like to say, “It’s a dance.”
Built on leading science and engineered for optimal results
