Guac Leveraged Upsolve AI to Build Customizable Customer-Facing Dashboards and Embed Business Intelligence in its platform for Grocery Demand Forecasting

Guac sets out to solve the grocers’ problem of unpredictable supply and demand such that food waste could be reduced and product availability could be maximized. Guac does so by applying cutting edge AI and machine learning algorithms to accurately forecast the demand at grocery stores, down to SKU, store, and daily level.

Guac’s Challenges and Needs

1. Data Complexity and Scalability: Handling large datasets from multiple stores required significant computational power and a scalable infrastructure.

2. Customizable Analytics: Standard solutions lacked the flexibility to adapt to Guac’s specific use cases, such as dedicated dashboards that precisely describe a grocery store’s value chain.

3. User Accessibility: Guac needed an analytics solution that was user-friendly for both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

The Solution

Guac partnered with Upsolve AI to deploy embedded business intelligence (BI) to each customer. These customizable dashboards with BI are tailored made for each customer because each grocery customer’s needs and systems are unique. Since the dashboard is built purposefully for each customer, it gives grocery chains the highest visibility into the historic and current sales, as well as analytics on the accuracy of the demand forecasts generated by Guac. On top of that, these stores could build their own analytics using Upsolve AI’s embedded BI feature to extract targeted insights needed. This offers the highest transparency, which enables the grocery stores to make the best possible operational decisions.

“For us, no two customers are alike — every grocery chain has its own unique data structures, team roles, and analytical needs. One store might want to focus on department-level forecast insights while another wants SKU-level sales insights. So instead of having a one-size-fits-all dashboard that's designed for an average grocery store, Upsolve AI's embedded BI allows us to rapidly build custom dashboards for each customer's specific needs” — Jack Solomon, Co-Founder and CTO of Guac

One of Guac’s Grocery Demand Forecast Analytics Dashboard with embedded Business Intelligence

Upsolve AI's Impact

With Upsolve AI’s embedded dashboard and business intelligence solution, Guac found:

1. Enhanced Operational Efficiency: The customizable dashboards streamlined decision-making processes of Guac’s end users, saving Guac’s team significant time in supporting their customer data analytics and reporting requests.

2. Scalable and Flexible Solution: Upsolve AI platform’s scalability allowed Guac to integrate additional stores and datasets from Google BigQuery seamlessly.

3. All the insights without leaving Guac’s platform: Previously, Guac had to share demand forecast analytics through a third-party application, forcing end users to leave Guac’s platform. With Upsolve AI’s dashboards, which are embeddable as native React frontend components, Guac’s users can now access these insights directly within Guac’s web application.

4. Customizable Dashboard Development: Upsolve AI’s team worked closely with Guac to design a user-friendly dashboard tailored to their requirements. The dashboard featured:

   • Self-Serve Real-Time Insights: Tailored up-to-date demand forecasts analytics, enabling timely and self-serve decision-making by Guac’s customers.

   • Interactive Visualizations: Customizable charts and graphs that end users could interact with, providing clear and actionable insights.

Key Metrics

• From zero to customizable dashboard with embedded BI deployed in production: 4 weeks

• Now - About 3 days to created a new Upsolve AI dashboard. Before - Around 3 weeks to build a custom dashboard and supporting API endpoints.

• Deletion of over 10,000 lines of code that was needed previously to support a custom dashboard, massively reducing engineering and maintenance burden.

Upsolve AI empowered Guac to transform its approach to offer grocery demand forecast analytics. By combining Guac’s unique AI-driven demand forecast, and Upsolve AI’s embedded BI as well as customizable dashboards, Guac allows their customers to have the best understanding of their grocery logistics to enhanced its operational efficiency, improved forecasting accuracy, and reduced waste. This partnership exemplifies how leveraging advanced AI tools, embedded business intelligence and dashboards can drive impactful business outcomes in the retail sector.

“Working with Upsolve AI has enabled us to scale our AI forecasting and replenishment solution across diverse grocery operations without compromising on customization or insight quality. It's been a game-changer for both our operations and our customers' success” — Jack Solomon, Co-Founder and CTO of Guac