Let’s all pause for a moment and recognize this single moment in time. This dumpster fire of a year that is 2020 is finally ending, and it couldn’t come a day earlier. See ya’ never, 2020 — go ahead and let that door hit you on the way out!
What a mess. What a steamy, hot mess. Those of us still standing today with mask-covered faces on December 24th should all pat ourselves on the back. We persevered through pandemic, home quarantine, months devoid of live events, total economic collapse, social unrest, and a disputed election – just to name some of the low lights.
Keep Calm & Thrive On
Amid all the chaos, our fellow gappers in the (virtual) halls at gap intelligence deserve to celebrate for much more than just surviving 2020. Despite living in an upside down world, we thrived over the past 9 months, in very gap-intelligence-kind of ways.
We thrived thanks to:
- 3x-a-week virtual meditation sessions (You’re the best, Leti!)
- Biweekly virtual “gappy” hours (Thanks, Erin and all our guest hosts!)
- Weekly virtual trivia nights (Congratulations team “Oaky Afterbirth” for taking home the gold at The Office trivia night!)
- Friday-afternoon virtual chugs (Adrienne, you are the undisputed champ!)
The great people of gap intelligence directed their energy toward more than just doing great for ourselves and supporting a vibrant company culture. We did a lot of great for our clients by investing in our GFD (great freakin’ data) and making multiple enhancements to our customer-facing tools.
Enhancements and added value to gap’s Dashboard platform:
- Launched a Notes & Changes card tool to help clients identify key changes in the market on a weekly basis
- Improved user interface to make it easier to analyze trends (forward and backward)
- New logic to analyze data in different time intervals like months and quarters
- Ability to filter by “flat ads” (non-SKU specific) in the Ad Share tool
- Added pre-selected defaults to the Custom Data Download tool to simplify and automate on-demand flat files
Improved the breadth and coverage of our GFD:
- Wholesale expansion of online/e-commerce promotion coverage
- Amazon and Best Buy Daily Deal promotion data
- Internationalization of GFDB (the cloud-based database that houses all gap data) to support 4-P’s causal data from around the world
- New promotion event tags like Back-to-School and Black Friday
- Added promotion incentive percentages in the Custom Data Download tool
- Expanded coverage of e-commerce/online channels to Product Presence and Ad Share tools
And I’m not even going to mention all the amazing internal enhancements that helped make our workflow processes more efficient, improved the quality of our data, and armed our industry analysts with the tools to dig deeper, and offer more sophisticated insights to clients!
In 2020 We Created Portfolio
I do want to shed a bright spotlight on one of the most significant new offerings to come from the gap intelligence development shop in several years. This week we officially launched Portfolio, a powerful Dashboard tool that simplifies the work of managing product assortments at specific retail accounts for our manufacturer clients.
It helps go-to-market teams identify holes and opportunities on the shelf, and it can quickly show the overall performance of a specific product’s pricing and promotional activity across it’s available merchant panel. Portfolio answers the all-important question: Is each SKU we offer at Merchant X set up to win?
Are We Almost There Yet?
So what I’m saying is that 2020 wasn’t ALL that bad after all. Yes it was painful, scary, and isolating. At times it was too hot, and other times it was freezing cold. I miss meeting face-to-face with clients and shaking their hands. I miss seeing my Dad in person. I miss going to ballgames. I miss hugging friends and loved ones. I miss sharing meals together in the cozy confines of the indoors.
But there is light at the end of this long, dark tunnel. 2021 is almost here, and I can confidently say without a doubt that, what we’ve worked tirelessly to build here at gap intelligence over the course of the last year, will set our clients up for success.
Stay safe, stay healthy. Keep calm and thrive on!
For more than 17 years, gap intelligence has served manufacturers and sellers by providing world-class services monitoring, reporting, and analyzing the 4Ps: prices, promotions, placements, and products. Email us at info@gapintelligence.com or call us at 619-574-1100 to learn more.
