A BI platform

Challenge

While it gets harder for small and mid-sized fashion retailers to compete with larger brands and online tycoons, our client came up with an idea of a BI (business intelligence) platform with machine learning capabilities to help smaller luxury brands improve their manufacturing and buying strategies based on data. With initial funding secured, the only thing the client needed was a trusted IT consultant with expertise in machine learning and BI development that could help them carry out the discovery phase, validating the feasibility of their product vision and perfecting it further.

Our tasks:

• Validate BI platform viability.
• Research data sources for training ML models.
• Think out the logic behind ML models and choose an appropriate ML algorithm.
• Nail down functional requirements.
• Put together compliance requirements.
• Design a BI platform architecture.

Solution

The BI platform would use open-source data from online stores and marketplaces about the popularity of certain styles in places of sales interest to generate predictions for designers, merchandisers, and buyers. The predictions would allow fashion brands to adjust production and sales strategies based on the knowledge about which items and styles are likely to be in high demand next season.