Power BI for retail and distribution
Power BI gives retail and distribution businesses a single view of sales, stock and margin across stores and channels. Veratas designs, builds and governs the deployment so every decision works from the same numbers.
Reporting across stores, channels and the supply chain
Retail and distribution generate enormous transaction data, yet a clear view of trade is often hard to reach.
Sales come through tills, e-commerce, marketplaces and wholesale accounts. Stock sits in stores, distribution centres and in transit. Finance holds cost and margin, and each system reports on its own terms. A buyer judging which lines to repeat, or an operations lead checking availability, often pieces the answer together from several exports.
Power BI provides one reporting layer over those sources. A governed semantic model defines sales, units, margin, stock cover and sell through consistently, so a store manager, a buyer and the finance team read the same figures. Direct Lake on Microsoft Fabric lets large transaction histories be reported without slow refreshes, which matters at the scale retail data reaches.
The value is in the joins. Connecting sales to stock shows lost trade from gaps on shelf. Connecting sales to cost shows true margin after markdown rather than headline revenue. Connecting store and channel data shows where demand is really being met. That integration is an engineering task, and it is the work Veratas does before building dashboards.
Where Power BI supports retail and distribution
The reporting problems retailers and distributors ask us to solve first.
Sales and trading performance
Track sales, units and transactions by store, region and channel against plan and last year, so trading teams see performance daily and act while a trend can still be influenced.
Stock and availability
Bring inventory across stores, distribution centres and transit into one view, showing stock cover, lost sales from gaps and lines at risk of markdown, so buying and replenishment respond sooner.
Margin and markdown
Combine sales with cost and markdown to show true margin by category and line, so commercial teams protect profit rather than chasing revenue alone.
Store and channel comparison
Compare like for like performance across stores and channels with consistent measures, helping operations spot strong and weak locations and act on the difference.
Supply chain and distribution
Report on order fulfilment, delivery performance and distribution centre throughput so logistics teams keep stock moving to where demand is.
How Veratas delivers Power BI for retail and distribution
A delivery approach built for high volume, multi channel retail data.
Map channels and define measures
We work with commercial and operations teams to inventory till, e-commerce, ERP and inventory sources, and agree definitions for sales, margin, stock cover and sell through so every channel measures the same way.
Engineer the data foundation
We model sales, stock and cost data in Microsoft Fabric, using Direct Lake so large transaction histories report quickly in one reliable semantic model.
Build dashboards and paginated reports
We design role based dashboards for store, buying and executive teams, plus paginated reports for trading packs and supplier reviews, all from the governed model.
Deploy, govern and support
We size capacity, set refresh schedules, configure workspaces and row level security by store or region, and hand over with training, or run the platform as a managed service.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Quick answers to questions you may have. Can't find what you're looking for? Check out our full documentation.
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One view of trade
Speak to Veratas about a Power BI deployment that gives your stores, buyers and finance team one trustworthy view of sales, stock and margin.