Retailer Connect System for Automated Data Normalization
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Current systems lack an automated, flexible, and secure mechanism for retailers to access and manage transaction data across complex business structures, including retail corporations, distribution companies, franchise owners, and retail site employees, leading to inefficiencies in data collection and analysis.
Innovation Solution
A retailer connect computing system that uses processors to receive identifiers for retailer networks, link retailers, and automatically collect and process performance data, including transaction data, to provide real-time insights and visual representations for management.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If manual data collection methods are used across multiple retailer computing systems, then data accessibility is limited, but system complexity and time consumption increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a centralized data collection system that acts as an intermediary between multiple retailer computing systems. This central system receives, normalizes, and processes transaction data from various sources, making data accessible to authorized parties without requiring complex direct connections between all systems. The intermediary handles data normalization and validation, reducing the complexity burden on individual retailer systems while improving overall data accessibility.
Solution Approach 2:
The centralized data collection system performs multiple functions: receiving data from diverse sources, normalizing different data formats, validating data quality, storing processed data, and distributing it to authorized users. This multi-functional approach consolidates what would otherwise require separate systems for each task, reducing overall system complexity while enhancing data accessibility across the retail network.
2Productivity
If automated data collection is implemented across hundreds or thousands of retailer sites, then real-time data access is enabled, but the complexity of managing diverse computing systems increases
Solution Approach 1:
The centralized system serves as an intermediary that manages the complexity of connecting to hundreds or thousands of retailer sites. It provides a unified interface for data collection, handling the diverse protocols and formats from different computing systems. This allows automated real-time data collection without requiring each individual site to implement complex integration logic, thus improving productivity while managing complexity centrally.
Solution Approach 2:
The system employs data normalization techniques that transform diverse data parameters from different retailer systems into a unified format. By changing the parameter representation to a standard form, the system can efficiently process data from numerous sources without being overwhelmed by format diversity, enabling automated collection across thousands of sites while keeping management complexity manageable.
3Loss of time
If centralized data processing is implemented for franchise networks, then real-time performance tracking is achieved, but data security and access control requirements become more complex
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements segmented access control where different user roles (corporate administrators, franchise owners, employees) are granted specific access permissions to different portions of the data. This segmentation allows real-time performance tracking across the entire franchise network while managing security complexity by providing each user group with only the data they need, rather than universal access to all systems.
Solution Approach 2:
The centralized processing system acts as an intermediary that handles security and access control centrally, rather than requiring each local system to implement its own security measures. This centralizes the complexity of access control management while enabling real-time data analysis, as the intermediary can enforce security policies uniformly across all data flows without impacting the speed of local data collection and processing.
4Device complexity
If manual data collection processes are used, then system implementation is simpler, but time consumption and labor requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system is designed to automatically collect, normalize, and process data from retailer computing systems without requiring manual intervention. The automated data collection processes eliminate the need for manual data entry and transfer, significantly reducing time consumption and labor requirements. The implementation maintains relative simplicity by using standardized interfaces that can be deployed across multiple systems without complex customization.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods for transforming and managing performance data associated with a retailer network are disclosed. In one embodiment, a computing system for creating and managing a retailer network is disclosed. The computing system comprises at least one processor and a memory device. The at least one processor is programmed to perform steps including receiving an identifier for a retailer network, linking at least one retailer to the identifier, and in response to the linking the identifier to the at least one retailer, automatically receiving, from at least one remote computing device, performance data for the at least one retailer, the performance data including at least one of new member enrollment data or transaction data. The steps further include normalizing and processing the performance data and causing to be displayed, on a user interface of a user computing device, a visual representation of the processed performance data.