Based in Burlington, less than 15 miles outside of Boston, Profitect is a software firm offering an award-winning prescriptive analytics solution. The solution uniquely processes data to automatically identify opportunities for improvement, and provides a prescriptive action informing the appropriate stakeholder(s), in plain language, how to act on each opportunity. The vision of Profitect is to reduce the amount of reports that inundate retail and CPG employees, in addition to being inefficient, inaccurate, and prone to personal bias. Profitect also aims to empower employees “at the edge” in order to make more informed decisions by telling them what they should know, instead of sending them a report to analyze, and prescribing the actions they should take. This quickly and consistently improves sales and margins while reducing labor costs.
A Closer Look at Prescriptive Analytics
Profitect’s award-winning prescriptive analytics solution leverages pattern detection, pragmatic Artificial Intelligence (AI), and machine learning to identify opportunities within data that impact sales and margin. The organization analyzes data to identify areas for improvement including: inventory and pricing inaccuracies, inconsistent on-shelf availability, unsellable merchandise, vendor noncompliance, and assortment discrepancies. Profitect then delivers these opportunities to the appropriate stakeholder(s) with simple, plain-text corrective actions for resolving them. The solution’s machine learning and AI capabilities help the system “learn from” each outcome to hone future results. It is designed to serve every department across the retail and CPG value chain, including supply chain, store operations, loss prevention, marketing, merchandising, finance, planning and allocation, and information technology.
Consistently Understanding Clients’ Needs and Objectives
Profitect’s Customer Success team holds frequent meetings and check-ins with customers to ensure they are consistently realizing value and their needs and objectives are being met. Additionally, the company holds quarterly calls and hosts a yearly user conference, Prescriptive Analytics Collaborative Training (PACT), to ensure communication and collaboration across its customer community. The organization also routinely hosts meetings of its Product Management Committee, which is a select group of customers and Profitect’s own Research & Development team who share feedback to refine the company’s award-winning prescriptive analytics solution.
Profitect’s team attends 20+ global industry conferences and events every year in order to stay up-to-date on the latest trends and challenges affecting retail and CPG. The CEO himself sits on several of the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA)’s Leaders Councils, which offer further insights into what retailers and CPG organizations need from an analytics provider. Profitect uses everything it learns to hone and refine its solution.
The Veteran Leader
As the CEO of Profitect, Guy Yehiav is responsible for setting the organization’s growth and leadership strategy. Guy is a 25-year veteran of the supply chain industry, and has held senior leadership positions at Oracle after founding Demantra US, which was acquired by Oracle in 2006. He is also a frequent contributor to Forbes, Money Inc, Retail Touchpoints, Women’s Wear Daily, RIS News, Total Retail, The Profit Chain, and Loss Prevention Magazine. Additionally, he is proud to sit on several leadership councils. Guy received his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science & Industrial Management from Shenkar College of Israel and completed his MBA in Entrepreneurship from Babson College in Massachusetts.
While working in the supply chain industry, Guy learned three important lessons that he brought with him to Profitect:
- Offer an efficient deployment: He believes one needs to offer their customers an implementation that takes days, not months or a year.
- Keep solutions simple: According to Guy, overcomplicated solutions are not scalable, so he made sure Profitect could be used by anyone and everyone and anywhere, whether parttime or full-time, elderly or young, skilled or unskilled.
- Support services should always be free: Vendors can’t nickel-and-dime their customers, Guy says. Profitect is committed to helping its customers succeed, and that’s not something that should be charged as an added service. The vendor and the customer must work together for both to succeed. So, all support services are included free of charge in every Profitect agreement.
Future Roadmap and Sustaining Competency
When it comes to the future, Profitect wants to replace the paradigm of reporting within the retail industry. The company’s solution has a very loyal following in the United States, so its next step is to expand its international presence. It is seeking to build upon its current business in the U.S., Europe, South Africa, and Israel, and may also expand into the Pacific region as well, due to interest in Australia.
A key priority for Profitect is maintaining its culture as it grows. Profitect is proud of the culture that it has built over the years, prioritizing work-life balance and diversity with a customer-first focus. If a customer needs support any time, Profitect’s team is always ready to step in to help. Whether it’s training, maintenance, or anything else, Profitect’s culture emphasizes doing the right thing and making sure its customers are realizing maximum value at all times. Guy Yehiav CEO
Client Feedback
“We were aware of Profitect’s reputation in the market as a leader, which is why we brought the team in to pitch, but it was really the first demonstration of their prescriptive analytics product that sold us.” Peter Enman, Loss Prevention Manager, Sobeys Inc.
“We started partnering with Profitect back in 2014. Today we have about 200 million lines of data running through the system daily, with 5,000 users. That’s 5,000 people that can take action on data, much faster than before.” Chris Adams, VP Category Management Services, Ahold Delhaize Company
“Profitect integrates sales data from the register to allow for greater visibility and control of sales behaviors to identify fraud, compliance, pricing, and associate efficiency.” Michelle Neal, Director of Operations, Sunglass Hut NA (As told to RIS News, January 2019)
