Haitham Ghadiry of Nuqleous shares how the company delivers data driven solutions for retail planning precision
My career spans over 25 years, primarily in technology and supply chain,” begins Haitham Ghadiry, Chief Revenue Officer at Nuqleous. “I started in ERP technology, then worked for Trimble, a publicly traded company, close to $4 billion in revenue today. I led a start-up division focusing on mobile resource management for direct store delivery, and route sales, as well as vehicle technology for GPS tracking. I then moved into the supply chain and enterprise commerce networks with TrueCommerce.
“I’ve always had a passion for startups, and in particular moving companies from bootstrap models to maturity. I started with TrueCommerce when its revenue was about $10 million, and with the help of many great team members, we were able to lift it up to $190 million by the time I left. At that time, we were focused on growing our business organically and through acquisition, so we acquired close to 12 companies and successfully integrated them within the TrueCommerce ecosystem. Our focus was on supply chain optimization, visibility and collaboration, using EDI technology to connect our customers to marketplaces. We also had another aspect of the business for supply chain execution, warehouse management, transportation and logistics. It was a great opportunity for me to get in-depth experience in pretty much all aspects of the supply chain and retail. Prior to joining Nuqleous, I went on to work for an emerging clienteling and AI assistant technology company, connecting retail operations with ecommerce shoppers to enhance consumer experience.
“I started with Nuqleous in March 2024, and saw a real opportunity for the company to become the sole market leader in this space. If we can execute effectively
on our vision and high ambition, I think this is achievable in the next four-to-five years. As Chief Revenue Officer, I lead sales and marketing partnerships and co-chair customer success with our VP of Customer Success,” he elaborates.
Nuqleous provides enterprise-wide solutions that transform the world’s retail data into actionable insights, enabling intelligent decision-making on a global scale across every category. Successful retailers and consumer product companies rely on accurate, accessible data. Nuqleous’ innovative software delivers faster results with a higher degree of accuracy, freeing teams to focus on strategic initiatives and value-added activities.
Advanced insights
“We specialize in advanced retail analytics and space planning technology,” Haitham continues. “Our Shelf IQ product is a simple-to-use, no-code planogram solution that automates space planning activities. It’s an enterprise app that integrates seamlessly with JDA Space Planning software from Blue Yonder to automate manual tasks, saving time and boosting ROI. It automates the most repetitive aspects of planogram development, like updating data and assortment on 1000s of planograms quickly and accurately. It enables retailers to make surgical, real-time decisions with actionable intelligence, including identifying and addressing exceptions, and responding to marketplace opportunities and disruptions with quick planogram revisions.”
Indeed, Nuqleous has delivered successful outcomes for multiple well-known brands. The KraftHeinz Company, for example, is one of the most recognizable food brands in the world. Due to the scale of their operations and the diversity of their retailers, KraftHeinz category management teams are tasked with substantial space planning responsibilities. Recognizing these challenges, KraftHeinz turned to Nuqleous Spotlight, a cloud-based, end-to-end retail analytics platform designed to bring all critical data points into a single, cohesive system. The partnership between KraftHeinz and Nuqleous was not just about implementing a new tool but about co-creating a solution that could evolve with the business. As the KraftHeinz category team began utilizing Shelf IQ to drive their space planning process, they noticed that the automation freed them up to make value-added assortment and layout decisions, instead of spending all their time rebuilding scripts and performing manual moves.
“We provide retail analytics for over 100 retailers,” Haitham continues. “Our number one retailer currently is Walmart. We don’t provide the analytics directly to Walmart, but to suppliers of Walmart. Our customers are CPG firms and suppliers working with retailers. We are a certified API provider for Walmart Luminate and can extract data from Luminate to harmonize and integrate it with other or multiple data sources. We provide users with ready-to-use, advanced insights. Today, our ecosystem covers over 180 top enterprise CPG firms and supports over 600 suppliers of Walmart,” he explains.
Indeed, Nuqleous’ retail analytics solutions work with Walmart Luminate data to streamline the decision-making process with advanced tools designed to simplify complex multi-source data analysis. Leveraged by the world’s leading brands and top category advisors, its comprehensive data model aggregates and harmonizes data from multiple sources, transforming it into actionable insights enabling customers to make swift, informed decisions that adapt to market dynamics.
“CPG firms and suppliers can get insights into daily or even hourly trends, including enhanced details of shopper profiles, such as loyalist or switcher consumers, for example. At the location level, inventory data ensures products are well stocked, but not overstocked. We also have solutions to help CPG firms, category advisers and sales teams run root cause analysis for some of the issues they may encounter for out-of-stock or sales inconsistencies, as well as sales performance reporting.
Empowering retail teams
“With the increased sharing of first party data, we’re getting better and better as an industry at putting the right product in the right place, at the right price, at the right time. We’re getting better at reacting to certain events. During Covid, for example, we were able to tell our customers the exact location of the first case in each state so they could plan accordingly. The impact of the Taylor Swift tour is another case in point. What happens when Taylor Swift goes to a city? How do you change the assortments based on that? It’s all about scrutinizing demographics and shopper behaviors. Our solutions enable better understanding of upstream and downstream activities to ensure products are in the right place.
“Our vision for the future and what we’re working on right now is to create a retailer-centric ecosystem for each retailer. Alongside this, integrating AI and machine learning into software solutions can enhance decision-making and support the changing dynamics of space planning and merchandising solutions. AI could potentially help in many ways. I’ve already mentioned the Taylor Swift concert, but another case in point might be the World Cup in 2026. We know the US will be hosting teams from different countries, and different demographics will be moving from one city to another, which will provide a great opportunity to increase sales. The US is investing billions of dollars in this event and the return will be in increased sales activities. To maximize the opportunity requires advanced analysis of data and probability, as well as an understanding of shopper behaviors and demographics.
“Instead of fearing AI,” Haitham elaborates, “we should probably embrace it and know how to prompt it effectively to maximize its positive impact. It’s important for corporate leaders to empower retail teams, category advisors and the sales and supply chain with the right tools and specialized retail analytics solutions to enable them to focus on data analytics rather than management. This should be at the center of any corporate strategy,” he concludes. “Rushing headlong into something may not be the appropriate response, but equally, delaying is not the answer.”