7Learnings: Increasing profits for retailers with a predictive pricing app
About 7Learnings
7Learnings helps retailers to accurately forecast demand for different price points using machine learning algorithms. Based on the predictions, customers can then optimize their prices towards their overall revenue and profit goals. An average profit increase of 10% is delivered within three months and tested with the help of an A/B test.
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Contact us7Learnings deploys Google Cloud’s scalable solutions to store and analyze the data it uses to predict prices for optimizing client profits and reduces their manual processes.
Google Cloud results
- Powers prediction-based pricing for retailers
- Automates time-consuming, manual decision-making
- Delivers accurate profit and revenue predictions on a product level
- Provides a first-class interface using Cloud Run
- Visualizes data insights with Looker Studio
Highest degree of automation of the pricing process
Seeing into the future may seem like a superpower, but technological advances are increasingly turning science fiction into fact. Machine learning tools can now anticipate the potential outcomes of an action, or set of actions, with growing sophistication and speed. Powered by an exponential rise in the availability of data, businesses are increasingly looking to analytics and forecasting tools to inform their decisions. Million Insights 2021 report suggests that the machine learning market will be worth $96.7 billion by 2025.
Enter 7Learnings, a Berlin-based startup whose browser-based software services automatically optimize pricing for its customers using these machine learning tools. It helps online retailers set their product prices based on desired outcomes and tracks the impact of these decisions. 7Learnings software looks at a wide variety of data to suggest optimal price changes, including whether there is enough of a product in stock, how seasonal changes may impact demand, what competitors are doing, and whether there’s a sales event, such as Black Friday, approaching.
“We wanted a lean setup, so we needed a platform free from unnecessary code but that was also scalable, supports our product, and offers flexibility and customization. We also wanted to work with the most innovative technology provider in this field. For us, that’s Google.”
—Felix Hoffmann, co-founder, 7Learnings7Learnings makes data work for its customers seven days a week, a mission that’s reflected in the company’s name. 7Learnings refers to the fact that the company’s software services are always learning and automating time-intensive tasks to continuously gather and analyze information in the background. This gives its customers more time to spend on other tasks, such as product development or marketing. The results are greater control, better oversight, and higher profits.
To gather and analyze all this data, 7Learnings needed to deploy a software platform capable of handling large amounts of information and making complex calculations quickly. That’s where Google Cloud came in. “We wanted a lean setup,” says Felix Hoffmann, co-founder of 7Learnings, “so we needed a platform free from unnecessary code, but that was also scalable, supports our product, and offers flexibility and customization. We also wanted to work with the most innovative technology provider in this field. For us, that’s Google.”
“We’re big fans of BigQuery. We love how high performance it is: we can run it solidly without any problems, whether that’s using it as a data warehouse or deploying our machine learning models there. BigQuery is the best fit for us.”
—Felix Hoffmann, co-founder, 7LearningsStoring and managing data with BigQuery
One of the main Google Cloud solutions 7Learnings employs to crunch its data is BigQuery. This helps its proprietary machine learning algorithms ingest, store, and analyze data. “We’re big fans of BigQuery,” Hoffman says. “We love how high performing it is: we can run it solidly without any problems, whether that’s using it as a data warehouse or deploying our machine learning models there. BigQuery is the best fit for us.”
BigQuery’s ability to easily ingest data from other platforms was also a big attraction for 7Learnings as it takes data from its clients, who use a variety of software systems, to provide useful insights to guide its pricing decisions. “There's lots of data we need, both internally and externally, and that’s a big part of our value proposition,” Hoffman explains. “We want to tap into this data, but that can present challenges, particularly on the client side where they may use multiple platforms to store data. With BigQuery we never have to worry about whether we’ll be able to ingest it, there’s always a solution, and we’ve never had any problems. It reduces the effort required to integrate data, which makes life a lot easier for our clients.”
Visualizing insights with Looker Studio
The data insights that 7Learnings gains become even more valuable with the help of other Google Cloud solutions. 7Learnings uses Looker Studio to analyze and visualize data from its BigQuery warehouse to spot key trends and assess key business metrics. “Looker Studio is a relatively simple but highly effective solution, and we’re heavy users,” Hoffman explains. “If we’d had to find another service provider for this analysis, it would have added more complexity and costs. The fact that it’s free to use with Google Cloud was a big attraction and is another reason we decided to partner with Google from launch.”
Deploying and scaling software with App Engine and Cloud Run
As a growing business, it was also important for 7Learnings to be able to scale up its storage in line with customer demand and Google Cloud’s App Engine solution was ideal for this. It transfers the code for 7Learning’s app to the Cloud, where it seamlessly scales according to customer demand. It also enables the company to undertake A/B testing, to debug coding issues and ensure security through its in-built SSL certificates. In addition, to package and deploy its software services so that its customers can access them from any browser, 7Learnings uses Cloud Run.
“Our goal is to offer the most innovative and user-friendly retail optimization services, that go beyond pricing to include areas where more money is being spent and there are greater opportunities for streamlining. From our experiences, we’re confident Google Cloud can help us to achieve this.”
—Felix Hoffmann, co-founder, 7LearningsPowering future growth with Google Cloud
7Learnings wants to continue making predictive price optimization as intuitive as possible for its customers, while expanding its offering. And Google Cloud will be integral in helping the company achieve its ambitions. Typically, customers who adopt 7Learnings’ predictive pricing services see profit increases of around 10%. One such customer is Vitafy, a growing Munich-based online retailer specializing in fitness, health, and nutrition products. Vitafy has seen an 18% increase in sales, 12% revenue growth, and a 10% uplift in profits since working with 7Learnings. “The nice thing about pricing,” Hoffman says, “is that even seemingly marginal gains in optimized pricing can lead to greater profits. We believe this is the future of pricing. There's going to be much more automation, and it’s all happening because machine-learning technology is now more accessible and easier to use.”
7Learnings now hopes to build on the lessons it’s learned with predictive pricing to offer its customers even more. Hoffman adds: “Our goal is to offer the most innovative and user-friendly retail optimization services, that go beyond pricing to include areas where more money is being spent and there are greater opportunities for streamlining. From our experiences, we’re confident Google Cloud can help us to achieve this.”
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About 7Learnings
7Learnings helps retailers to accurately forecast demand for different price points using machine learning algorithms. Based on the predictions, customers can then optimize their prices towards their overall revenue and profit goals. An average profit increase of 10% is delivered within three months and tested with the help of an A/B test.