How much does a retail BI system cost?

A focused retail analytics build - 3-5 data sources, core dashboards for sales, inventory, and margin - typically runs £15,000-£35,000. A full retail data platform with customer segmentation, predictive stock alerts, and multi-location reporting runs £35,000-£80,000+. Maintenance and hosting costs depend on data volume and update frequency.

Which retail systems can you connect?

Shopify and Shopify Plus, Square, Lightspeed, Vend, WooCommerce, DEAR Inventory, Cin7, Unleashed, Brightpearl, custom ERP and WMS systems, Google Analytics 4, Meta Ads, and loyalty platforms including Smile.io and LoyaltyLion. We can connect to any system with an API or data export.

How often does the data refresh?

We build refresh cycles to match your reporting needs - hourly for operational dashboards (inventory levels, today's sales), daily for management reporting (margin, sell-through, week-on-week), and weekly or monthly for strategic reporting (customer LTV, seasonal trend analysis). Real-time streaming is available for high-volume retailers.

Do we need a data warehouse?

For most retail BI projects, yes. We typically use BigQuery or Snowflake as the central warehouse - data from Shopify, your POS, and other sources lands there, gets cleaned, and powers the dashboards. The cost is low for most retail data volumes (a few hundred dollars per month). We set up and manage the warehouse as part of the project.

Can you build dashboards in our existing BI tool?

Yes. We build in Metabase, Looker Studio, Power BI, Tableau, and Grafana. We also build custom React dashboards embedded in your existing admin panel when you want the analytics inside your product rather than in a separate tool. We recommend the right tool based on your team's existing setup.

Retail Business Intelligence Solutions

Retail Business Intelligence

Retail decisions are made on incomplete data. The Shopify report shows online revenue. The POS export shows in-store. The WMS has stock levels. The loyalty platform has customer segments. Nobody has all four in one place, so margin decisions get made on the channel you happened to export yesterday.
A unified analytics layer pulling from Shopify, POS, WMS, and your loyalty platform. Margin by SKU, inventory performance, store comparison, and customer segmentation, in one dashboard your team can open on Monday morning and trust. We build the data layer first: pipelines, warehouse, unified data model. Then the dashboards on top.

Unified dashboard pulling from Shopify, POS, WMS, and Google Analytics into one view
Inventory analytics with stockout prediction, slow-mover identification, and reorder alerts
Margin and discount analysis by category, channel, and store location
Customer segmentation for loyalty targeting and retention campaigns
Store performance comparison across all locations in one report

Recent outcomes

Voice AI · Research

6× deeper insights

Text-based interviews converted to automated phone calls

AI Automation · Ops

20k+ txns day one

Manual invoice OCR across 40+ gas stations

Loyalty · Retail

1,062 users in 4 weeks

SuperValu & Centra loyalty platform with receipt validation

SaaS · Logistics

2,000+ shipments yr 1

Multi-carrier shipping hub for Indonesian eCommerce

4.9

on Clutch

See our work

The problem

Sound familiar?

Margin by SKU is spread across three exports, and nobody on the commercial team can see the full picture without a day of manual work?
Stockouts happening in one location while another carries weeks of dead stock because inventory data is not unified in real time?

Short answer

RaftLabs builds retail business intelligence systems that unify data from Shopify, POS systems, warehouse management software, and loyalty platforms into a single analytics layer. Retail teams use these dashboards to track margin by SKU, identify slow-moving stock, compare store performance, and segment customers for targeted promotions. Most retail BI projects take 6-10 weeks.

Key takeaways

Retail BI unifies Shopify, POS, WMS, and loyalty data into one analytics layer instead of five disconnected exports
Margin by SKU, inventory performance, store comparison, and customer segmentation are the four dashboards retail teams need most
Most retail BI projects take 6-10 weeks and run £15,000-£80,000+ depending on data source count and complexity
A data warehouse (BigQuery or Snowflake) underpins most builds, typically costing a few hundred dollars a month

Trusted by

Retail BI delivery, by the numbers

products shipped since 2015: 100+

cost delivery: Fixed

week delivery for most retail BI projects: 6-10

retail businesses across 5+ markets: 5+

We build the data layer first: pipelines, warehouse, unified data model. Then the dashboards on top. In that order, so the numbers your team acts on are actually correct.

What retail decision can't your team make right now because the data isn't in one place?

Tell us your current systems and what the reporting gaps are costing you. We'll scope the BI build.

Talk about your retail BI project

Related services

What clients say

What clients say about working with us

Three-year average engagement. Founders and operators describing the work in their own words. No marketing varnish.

Jennyfer Ngueno

West Africa

CoFounder & CEO, Sekou

RaftLabs has been an exceptional partner. From the start, they became more than just a service provider, they embraced our vision with their expertise and dedication. We're proud of the result.

01 / 06

Retail Business Intelligence, scoped in one call.

Tell us what's broken. Within one business day you get a straight take on cost, timeline, and the right first step. No deck, no pressure.

Stay on topic

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Proof

Multi-location gas station operator processes 20k+ daily transactions after replacing spreadsheets with AI OCR software

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Supply Chain Software Development

Custom supply chain software for manufacturers, distributors, and retailers, demand forecasting, procurement automation, supplier management, inventory optimisation, and end-to-end visibility.

: A focused retail analytics build - 3-5 data sources, core dashboards for sales, inventory, and margin - typically runs £15,000-£35,000. A full retail data platform with customer segmentation, predictive stock alerts, and multi-location reporting runs £35,000-£80,000+. Maintenance and hosting costs depend on data volume and update frequency.
: Shopify and Shopify Plus, Square, Lightspeed, Vend, WooCommerce, DEAR Inventory, Cin7, Unleashed, Brightpearl, custom ERP and WMS systems, Google Analytics 4, Meta Ads, and loyalty platforms including Smile.io and LoyaltyLion. We can connect to any system with an API or data export.
: We build refresh cycles to match your reporting needs - hourly for operational dashboards (inventory levels, today's sales), daily for management reporting (margin, sell-through, week-on-week), and weekly or monthly for strategic reporting (customer LTV, seasonal trend analysis). Real-time streaming is available for high-volume retailers.
: For most retail BI projects, yes. We typically use BigQuery or Snowflake as the central warehouse - data from Shopify, your POS, and other sources lands there, gets cleaned, and powers the dashboards. The cost is low for most retail data volumes (a few hundred dollars per month). We set up and manage the warehouse as part of the project.
: Yes. We build in Metabase, Looker Studio, Power BI, Tableau, and Grafana. We also build custom React dashboards embedded in your existing admin panel when you want the analytics inside your product rather than in a separate tool. We recommend the right tool based on your team's existing setup.

Work with us

Tell us what you need. We'll tell you what it would take.

We scope Retail Business Intelligence in 30 minutes. You walk away with a clear cost, timeline, and approach. No commitment required.

Scope and cost agreed before work starts. No surprises. No obligation.
Working prototype within 3 weeks of kickoff.
Pay by milestone. You see progress before each invoice.
60-day post-launch warranty. Bug fixes, UI tweaks, and deployment support. No retainer.
All conversations are NDA-protected.