The first thing I’d build
A private tool for your team and nobody else, built to three rules. The answers match a report you already trust. The people who need the numbers can get them without asking anyone. Every answer shows where it came from and what period it covers.
Underneath that, the tool pulls your data on the schedule it refreshes, into a small database you own, and uses metric definitions we write down together so velocity means the same thing in every answer. What your team sees depends on how they work: a table they can filter by retailer, market, product and period, a question box that turns plain English into a query against those definitions, or both. We decide that with the team, not in advance. Where a language model is involved, it never makes up a number.
That’s the Ask-Your-Data build. How I’d build it over SPINS is written out in full, and nothing in it has been built.
What the first engagement includes
A free 30-minute call, then one page of questions to put to your data provider, because the agreement decides what can be built. Then a targeted Walkthrough: two sessions with the people who ask the questions, ending in the metric definitions, the list of 15 to 25 questions the tool must answer correctly, the interface your team wants, and a fixed price. Then the build, with onboarding and a check at 30 days to see who is using it and what it got wrong.
The first version is one source and one agreed question list. Charts, saved views, a second data source and alerts come after it proves useful. What sets the price is the same for every build.
Where this comes from
A frozen-food brand wants to ask plain-English questions about its business at a big-box retailer. Today the reports come from its brokers, built on the retailer’s own point-of-sale data. The sales team gets a file, and when they have a question, they ask the broker. More data sits in SPINS behind an API their IT team doesn’t know how to set up, and even then each new pull would likely be a manual job. We’ve talked it through. Nothing has been built, for them or any other brand, and the first step is confirming which source the answers should come from and what each agreement allows.
