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10 Best Retail Analytics Software In 2023

Best Retail Analytics Software Shortlist

After researching their ability to provide high-level retail business data, here are some of the best retail analytics software.

  1. 1. Oracle Retail — Best for end-to-end retail operations optimizations
  2. 2. Tableau — Best for data visualization
  3. 3. Looker — Best for customizability
  4. 4. MicroStrategy — Best for comprehensive retail analytics
  5. 5. Matillion — Best for scaling data demand
  6. 6. Oracle Retail Analytics — Best for analyzing retail experiences
  7. 7. Adobe Analytics — Best for turning insights into action
  8. 8. Twilio Segment — Best for a complete customer view
  9. 9. Qlik Sense — Best for self-service data visualization
  10. 10. SAS Retail Analytics — Best for demand planning

These days, ecommerce businesses rely more on data from their operations and the entire retail industry. So, implementing retail analytics software is increasingly beneficial for your online store. These platforms are versatile, and because of intense competition, you can find one that meets your specific requirements. However, finding the right one for your ecommerce business can be challenging because of the available options. So, I researched the top retail analytics software I could find and provided an overview of each tool, including why I chose each one, to help with your search.

What Is Retail Analytics Software

Retail analytics software is a sophisticated technological solution designed to extract valuable insights and drive data-driven decision-making within the retail industry. By leveraging advanced algorithms and statistical models, this software enables ecommerce retailers to analyze vast amounts of data from several sources, such as point-of-sale (POS) systems, customer loyalty programs, and online platforms. These tools empower online retail businesses to understand customer behavior comprehensively, optimize inventory management, enhance pricing strategies, and personalize marketing campaigns, ultimately leading to improved operational efficiency, increased sales, and superior customer experiences.

Overviews Of The 10 Best Retail Analytics Software

Based on my experience with ecommerce software, the following overviews of the best retail analytics software will help highlight the pros and cons of each tool and what makes them unique.

1

Oracle Retail

Best for end-to-end retail operations optimizations

Oracle Retail is a powerful retail analytics software solution designed to empower retailers with comprehensive insights and data-driven tools to enhance their operations and customer experiences. it offers a wide array of features, including demand forecasting, inventory optimization, merchandise planning, and pricing optimization, all integrated within a unified platform. oracle retail leverages advanced analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to provide retailers with actionable data, enabling them to make informed decisions, optimize supply chains, reduce costs, and adapt to evolving market dynamics.

Why I Picked Oracle Retail: Oracle Retail distinguishes itself by offering an end-to-end retail suite that covers all major aspects of retail operations, from inventory management and pricing optimization to demand forecasting and merchandising planning. Many competitors offer specialized solutions for specific functions, but Oracle Retail provides a comprehensive platform that integrates all these functions seamlessly. This comprehensive approach reduces the complexity of managing multiple systems, fosters better collaboration across departments, and ensures a unified view of retail analytics, setting Oracle Retail apart as an all-encompassing retail analytics solution.

Oracle Retail Standout Features & Integrations

Features include demand forecasting, inventory optimization, merchandise planning, pricing optimization, point-of-sale (pos) solutions, end-to-end omnichannel support, real-time analytics, task management, integration with oracle cloud infrastructure (oci), customization, and extensibility.

Integrations are not listed by name, but it does promise connections with foundation data cloud services, retail pricing cloud service, stock count export, notification services, ticket printing, and other 3rd parties.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
5 1

Free demo

Pricing upon request

Pros

  • Integration with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure offers scalability
  • Advanced analytics, ML, and AL for analytics
  • Feature-rich, comprehensive retail suite

Cons

  • Not cost-effective for small businesses
  • Implimentation takes time, resource-intensive
2

Tableau

Best for data visualization

Tableau helps ecommerce businesses visualize and understand retail data and use it to resolve pressing difficulties. The platform offers a real-time, interactive dashboard, enabling users to do a deep dive, discover the insights they need, and identify new opportunities.

Why I picked Tableau: Data visualizations are a significant aspect of retail analytics, which is where Tableau shines more than other retail analytics platforms. Tableau can provide intuitive, detailed, and accessible retail data via user-friendly data dashboards. When using Tableau, you’ll gain real-time insights, allowing you to make effective data-driven decisions in your operations.

Tableau Standout Features and Integrations

Features include a cloud-based, flexible, self-service platform that helps your business make more intelligent, insight-based decisions. Tableau also allows you to share and collaborate analyses and insights securely.

Integrations include many native system connection options that allow you to share your data wherever it resides, such as Anaplan, Box, Databricks, Datorama, Dropbox, Google Analytics, Marketo, Oracle Eloqua, QuickBooks Online, Salesforce, and other software options. Tableau also offers an Extensions API that allows you to create custom integrations and interact with your data from other third-party applications.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.4 1860

14-day free trial

From $70/user/month

Pros

  • Simple drag-and-drop tool to handle data calculations
  • Users can develop various charts
  • Creates useful data visualization dashboards

Cons

  • Requires some coding knowledge
  • Customer support can be slow
3

Looker

Best for customizability

Looker offers a customizable retail analytics platform to ecommerce businesses that provides extensive customizability capabilities to help make smarter business decisions. The software has multiple customizable interfaces businesses can use to fit their needs.

Why I picked Looker: Using cookie-cutter, out-of-the-box data display templates can be helpful at first and quickly get you started when you need to keep a closer eye on your retail analytics, but customizable platforms will help you tailor the software to your business’s unique requirements. So, I added Looker to this article because it empowers you to customize its convenient data analytics templates. You can use Looker to choose from various data visualization components and focus on the metrics that matter most.

Looker Standout Features and Integrations

Features include tools to centralize trusted data metrics across teams and systems; you can also deploy and test data changes in a safe environment. Looker also offers business intelligence capabilities that allow you to access, analyze, and act on real-time data at scale on the cloud service of your choice.

Integrations include connections with popular business management applications, such as Asana, Coupler.io, Hightouch, HubSpot, Parabola.io, Pipedream, Salesforce, Transcend.io, Twilio Segment, Workato, and other software options. You can also use a paid Zapier account or Looker’s API to connect the platform with your current systems.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.4 1082

$300 in free credits

Pricing upon request

Pros

  • Effective collaboration capabilities
  • User-friendly interface
  • Powerful data visualization tool

Cons

  • Not cost-effective for small businesses
  • Large data sets slow the platform down
4

MicroStrategy

Best for comprehensive retail analytics

MicroStrategy offers enterprise-level ecommerce organizations a comprehensive analytics system that covers a wide range of data.

Why I picked MicroStrategy: I decided to add MicroStrategy to this article because of its ability to cater to the needs of enterprise ecommerce businesses and manage comprehensive datasets. MicroStrategy can handle extensive data to provide a complete view of your businesses. The platform offers intelligent workflows to make data-driven analytics dashboards easier to navigate and monitor.

MicroStrategy Standout Features and Integrations

Features include an AI-power chatbot that locates answers and self-service insights to help users understand what’s happening with their data. The software also provides insight tools that use advanced algorithms that detect data outliers, patterns, and anomalies across datasets.

Integrations include connections with standard business applications, such as Datalytics, Kyvos, LivePreso, Metric Insights, Openbridge, Phrazor, Promethium, Salesforce, Toucan, Vibe.fyi, and other software options. MicroStrategy also offers an API that allows users to create custom connections with their toolsets.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.2 528

Free demo available

Pricing upon request

Pros

  • Fluid, interactive design
  • Easy to understand
  • Excellent user interface

Cons

  • Setup takes longer to complete
  • Doesn’t display correctly on smaller screens
5

Matillion

Best for scaling data demand

Matillion helps ecommerce brands analyze retail data accurately as they scale for growth. The platform allows them to build better insights to increase loyalty, provide personalized experiences, and improve segmentation and cross-selling.

Why I picked Matillion: As your business scales for growth, monitoring larger data sets can become more difficult without the right tools, so I wanted to add Matillion to this list to address this scenario. With Matillion, you can quickly build data pipelines to provide business-ready information with as much or as little coding as necessary. The platform allows you to quickly scale the number of users and retail tasks and enable everyone to make data work more productive by empowering them to move, transform, and orchestrate data pipelines.

Matillion Standout Features and Integrations

Features include a library of hundreds of connectors that enables teams to quickly load data and meet growing business needs. Matillion empowers users to quickly and easily perform complex data transformations via a visual, low-code designer.

Integrations include connections with some of the most powerful and popular business management systems available on the market. These include integrations with third-party applications such as Google Ads, Google Analytics, HubSpot CRM, Mailchimp, Marketo, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Mixpanel, QuickBooks, Xero, Zendesk, and other software options.

30-day free trial + 500 free credits.

From $2/credit.

Pros

  • Pay-as-you-go plans
  • Quick setup
  • Provides a smooth transition to the cloud

Cons

  • Few video tutorials are available
  • Complex user interface
6

Oracle Retail Analytics

Best for analyzing retail experiences

Oracle Retail Analytics provides AI-powered analytics to help ecommerce businesses effectively develop strategies to anticipate customers’ next moves and deliver exceptional experiences with their brands.

Why I picked Oracle Retail Analytics: Delivering more innovative experiences is a crucial objective for ecommerce brands because it can convince customers to make purchases and come back for more. Oracle Retail Analytics offers tools for online stores to help them understand customers and their behavior via customer-specific insights collected from segmentation, demographics, and promotion performance analysis. You can also use the platform’s capabilities to identify actionable opportunities across touchpoints to evaluate sales and profit contribution.

Oracle Retail Analytics Standout Features and Integrations

Features include retail optimization tools to enhance price recommendations to maximize profits and sell inventory. Oracle Retail Analytics also helps your business optimize inventory replenishment by aligning service levels with the minimum amount of stock.

Integrations include connections with several business systems, such as Accountagility ORYX, DataTerrain, Integsoft, Kodiak Hub, Quantum, Rayven, The Service Manager, and Visual Knowledge Share. However, the platform offers an API to create custom integrations.

Free demo available

Pricing upon request

Pros

  • User-friendly interface
  • Consumes vast amounts of data
  • Helpful visual dashboard

Cons

  • Steep learning curve
  • Small number of training materials are available
7

Adobe Analytics

Best for turning insights into action

Adobe Analytics offers tools to help ecommerce brands capture in-depth customer data to act on and enhance future experiences.

Why I picked Adobe Analytics: When working with retail analytics, monitoring and analyzing the information is important, but another crucial aspect is acting on the data your business receives. So, I added Adobe Analytics because it offers various tools, such as attribution, marketing analytics, and predictive analytics. With these features, your business can get the information you need to act on and optimize customers’ experiences with your brand.

Adobe Analytics Standout Features and Integrations

Features include machine learning and artificial intelligence tools to deliver customer insights and easy-to-read data visualizations. The platform’s predictive analytics capabilities can analyze customer data, identify patterns, and predict future behavior to tap into untouched potential.

Integrations include data connectors to link Adobe Analytics with third-party applications, such as Amplitude, AppsFlyer, Claravine, Dynatrace, Optimizely, SAP, Siteimprove, SurveyMonkey, Tealium, Twilio Segment, and other software options. You can also use a paid Zapier account or Adobe Analytics’ API to make custom integrations with your toolset.

30-day free trial

From $33.99/month

Pros

  • Useful web analytics and reporting
  • Tracks customers’ journeys across multiple channels
  • Detailed, actionable insights

Cons

  • Creating data views isn’t intuitive
  • Steep learning curve
8

Twilio Segment

Best for a complete customer view

Twilio Segment helps ecommerce businesses better understand customers by unifying touch points across all platforms and channels. Segment’s information will empower users to personalize marketing campaigns further and increase return on ad spend via better targeting and engagement.

Why I picked Twilio Segment: I wanted to add Twilio Segment to this article because of its ability to enhance your marketing processes with a complete customer view. Twilio Segment provides analytics to help you get an in-depth understanding of your customer’s journeys and allow you to deliver personalized messages. You can use the platform to engage with customers in real-time from anywhere without relying on other teams.

Twilio Segment Standout Features and Integrations

Features include tools to help align marketing, engineering, and analytics teams with a shared data dictionary that standardizes your data. Twilio Segment also provides a secure environment that automatically detects and classifies problems in real time and accelerates compliance.

Integrations include connections with high-level business management tools to help optimize data processes, such as Algolio Insights, AppsFlyer, Bento, Bloomreach Engagement, Everflow, Hotjar, Intercom, LiveChat, Looker, OneTrust, and other software options. Twilio Segment also allows users to create custom integrations with a paid Zapier account.

14-day free trial + free plan available

From $120/month (billed annually)

Pros

  • Improves data accuracy
  • Significant number of native integrations
  • Manages data from multiple sources

Cons

  • Paid plan isn’t suitable for smaller businesses
  • Steep learning curve
9

Qlik Sense

Best for self-service data visualization

Qlik Sense allows ecommerce businesses to quickly combine, load, explore, and visualize their data of any size using self-service tools. Users can ask questions, drill down, or zoom out to find any answer they need or change focus.

Why I picked Qlik Sense: I chose to add Qlik Sense to this article because of its ability to help users explore their data with interactive charts, tables, and objects. When using Qlik Sense, you can analyze your data and generate insights. Self-service data tools will help you provide access to business data and help everyone make better decisions, regardless of expertise levels.

Qlik Sense Standout Features and Integrations

Features include alerting and action tools that help you monitor and react to data changes; you can also establish event-driven actions to automate routine tasks. You’ll also have access to search and conversational analytics tools that use natural language to interact with data and generate insights.

Integrations include connections with over 40 third-party tools and applications to help manage your ecommerce business, such as CloudSwyft, Collibra, Datameer, HubSpot, Salesforce, Smartsheet, Spacewell, SysAid, Tray.io, Vertica, and other software options. Qlik Sense also provides an API that empowers users to create custom integrations with their current systems.

30 Days Free Trial

$30/user/month

Pros

  • Syncs data from multiple websites and data sources
  • Excellent customization capabilities
  • Simple to get started

Cons

  • Can slow down when working with large data sets
  • Pricing isn’t suitable for small businesses
10

SAS Retail Analytics

Best for demand planning

SAS Retail Analytics provides real-time consumer data to empower ecommerce businesses to enhance product demand planning.

Why I picked SAS Retail Analytics: Understanding product demand is essential for your business’s success, so I added SAS Retail Analytics to help with this aspect of retail analytics. The platform allows users to apply analytics throughout their customers’ journeys for deeper insights and enhanced demand planning. With SAS Retail Analytics, you can automate demand planning insights across your entire supply chain and visualize demand data to quickly identify patterns related to sales, pricing, shipments, promotions, and other vital aspects.

SAS Retail Analytics Standout Features and Integrations

Features include insights to help you optimize inventory and product pricing to increase inventory turns with fewer markdowns. The software also offers merchandise and assortment planning tools that provide information to help you get the right merchandise when customers are ready to buy.

Integrations include connections with top process management and database applications to enhance retail analytics processes. These include connections with third-party tools such as Anaconda, Google Analytics 360, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, MySQL, Salesforce, SingleStore, Snowflake, Vertica, and other software options.

Free demo available

Pricing upon request

Pros

  • Handles large-scale analytics
  • Quick analysis of large data
  • Interactive data visualizations

Cons

  • Lack of documentation
  • Steep learning curve

The 10 Best Retail Analytics Software Summary

Tool Free Option Price
1
Oracle Retail

Best for end-to-end retail operations optimizations

Free demo

Pricing upon request Visit Website
2
Tableau

Best for data visualization

14-day free trial

From $70/user/month Visit Website
3
Looker

Best for customizability

$300 in free credits

Pricing upon request Visit Website
4
MicroStrategy

Best for comprehensive retail analytics

Free demo available

Pricing upon request Visit Website
5
Matillion

Best for scaling data demand

30-day free trial + 500 free credits.

From $2/credit. Visit Website
6
Oracle Retail Analytics

Best for analyzing retail experiences

Free demo available

Pricing upon request Visit Website
7
Adobe Analytics

Best for turning insights into action

30-day free trial

From $33.99/month Visit Website
8
Twilio Segment

Best for a complete customer view

14-day free trial + free plan available

From $120/month (billed annually) Visit Website
9
Qlik Sense

Best for self-service data visualization

30 Days Free Trial

$30/user/month Visit Website
10
SAS Retail Analytics

Best for demand planning

Free demo available

Pricing upon request Visit Website

Other Options

To make this article more robust, I had to add additional retail analytics software options worth some consideration. Here are other platform options you should research when looking for new retail analytics tools.

  1. Salesforce Einstein Analytics

    Best for artificial intelligence

  2. Infor Retail Analytics

    Best for solving retail challenges

  3. Microsoft Power BI

    Best for collaboration

  4. Heap

    Best for understanding customers’ digital journeys.

  5. Alteryx

    Best for quick data insights.

  6. Lightspeed

    Best for multichannel sales and inventory management.

  7. Sisense

    Best for infusing retail analytics into daily workflows.

  8. Domo

    Best for optimizing business processes with retail data.

  9. SAP BusinessObjects

    Best scalable business information infrastructure.

  10. Sigma Computing

    Best spreadsheet-like data interface.

  11. Mi9 Retail Analytics

    Best for enterprise ecommerce organizations.

  12. LS Retail

    Best for managing entire retail operations.

  13. IBM Cognos Analytics

    Best for relevant analysis that aligns with objectives.

  14. RetailEdge

    Best point-of-sale analytics solution.

Selection Criteria For Retail Analytics Software

Here’s a short summary of the main selection and evaluation criteria I used to develop my list of the best retail analytics software for this article:

Core Functionality

When looking for new retail analytics software for your ecommerce business, understanding their core functionality is essential. You’ll find the following core functionality in every platform you discover during your search, no matter the vendor:

  • Identify and analyze customer data to determine which items sell well, when they sell the most, and what demographics purchase which items.
  • Study shopping patterns and identify consumer trends to help marketing and sales teams develop better strategies and implement loyalty programs.
  • Offer real-time analytics and data visualization via intelligent dashboards that allow businesses to monitor vital KPIs and enable trend prediction and data forecasting.

Key Features

The key features of retail analytics software will help you perform specific processes and get the most out of your data. The following are some key features to look for when searching for new retail analytics tools.

  • Data Aggregation: Retail analytics platforms gather data from several sources, such as POS and enterprise resource planning tools, to provide an overview of your ecommerce store’s operations and performance.
  • Performance Metrics: The reports retail analytics tools generate include metrics that relate to sales trends, customer behavior, inventory management, and product performance, allowing you to track performance compared to critical benchmarks and make proper adjustments.
  • Behavioral Insights: By collecting customer behavioral data across multiple sales channels, such as website visits or social media marketplaces, your retail analytics software provides helpful insights into how customers interact with your online store and identifies areas that need improvement.
  • Competitor Monitoring: The ability to control who and what you’re monitoring is vital, and your retail analytics software will gather data comprised of your competitors and other retailers that fit your product catalog and style you’re offering through your online store.
  • Action Triggers and Alerts: Retail analytics tools can help you automate time-sensitive, dynamic price settings and product assortments in real time to help you interpret and leverage situations as they unfold to make predictive intelligence-based decisions.
  • Real-Time Competitor Benchmarking: These platforms can help you benchmark your pricing based on competitors in real time to empower your teams to make quick, effective pricing strategy changes.

Usability

When researching the best retail analytics software for this article, I research reviews of each platform to determine whether they make it easier for teams to quickly access and analyze data without extensive training. I also look for tools that quickly generate performance reports in multiple formats, such as PDF, CSV, or Excel. Many of the tools in this article also enable users to easily share data and insights with key stakeholders.

Software Integrations

Another aspect I considered when deciding which retail analytics software to add to this article is how well they integrate with other business systems. When operating your ecommerce business, you might have several data sources, such as customer relationship management, POS, and inventory management tools. To make it onto this list, these platforms had to be compatible with standard ecommerce toolsets, and they must simply connect data from all sources to provide an in-depth view of your operations.

Customizable

Customizable and flexible retail analytics solutions can be beneficial for generating reports based on your specific needs and specifications. Customized data reporting can help you easily track your products’ performance and make adjustments when necessary via real-time data that allows your teams to discover growth opportunities. So, when creating this article, I looked for retail analytics solutions you can customize to capture and analyze data from multiple sources and allow you to specify the exact data points you want to include in future reports, allowing you or other team leaders to analyze key performance metrics to identify data trends and patterns.

People Also Ask

You might have some questions that you need answered before coming to a final decision on which retail analytics software to choose. Luckily, many others have frequently asked questions I wanted to answer and help you understand these tools further.

Other Ecommerce Planning & Analytics Software Reviews

Planning and analytics are vital functions when managing an ecommerce business’s operations, so utilizing the right tools is essential. There is a multitude of other software outside of this article that can handle your planning and analytics needs which you can find in the following review lists:

The Takeaway 

Having all the details can make choosing the best retail analytics software easier. Using retail analytics solutions is always a good idea if you know how to leverage them to answer questions you have about enhancing your ecommerce operations and gaining more insights to better serve customers. However, remember that you need a deep understanding of these platforms, their features, and the pros and cons to choose the most suitable for your business—and this article is an excellent starting point. 

If you need more ecommerce advice or software recommendations, sign up for The Ecomm Manager newsletter to get the help you need to enhance your operations and increase revenues.

By Francois Marchand

Francois Marchand is The Ecomm Manager's content strategist and editor. He is passionate about helping and educating business leaders, ecommerce professionals, and digital marketers grow their skill sets to stay ahead of the competition. Francois holds a BA Specialization in Communication Studies & Journalism from Concordia University (Montreal, QC) and 20+ years of experience in ecommerce, marketing, traditional and digital media, and public relations, including The Vancouver Sun, National Post, CBC/Radio-Canada, Unbounce, and Vancouver Film School. He also hosts The Ecomm Manager Podcast, discussing ecommerce best practices, customer experience, branding, inventory management, shipping and delivery, and analytics with expert guests.

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