You can make your Shopify store even more useful, flexible and effective by integrating it with 7thLite. In this piece, we discuss how to do it.

Integrating 7thLite and your Shopify Store

From your Shopify store, go to the app store, and install 7thLite. When you select the 7thLite app, you will be directed to the 7thLite app screen. Select the Add app button.

A new screen will display requesting you to install 7thLite. Select the Install app button.

After the 7thLite app has been installed, you will be directed to the Registration screen. You will fill in the information on the screen to complete the registration. The user will then select the submit button. You will be emailed a temporary password.

The Data Connections screen will display with Shopify already installed. Please note that you will need to manually run the sync process in order for the system to import all of the Shopify data. A message will display in the upper right hand corner of the screen indicating that you need to run the sync process.

Select the Sync button on the left hand side of the screen. A window will open for you to select the Sync process. A message will display in the upper right hand corner indicating that the initial sync process may take up to three (3 hours) based on the size of your data. You can close 7thLite and work on other things while the sync is processing. The first time the data is sync’d, 7thLite will import your sales history and product information. After that, your Shopify store data will automatically sync daily with 7thLite.

Once the sync is completed, you will receive an email notification.

After you’ve connected it to your store, you can log into 7thLite just by clicking on its title from the app section of your Shopify store.

When selecting the 7thLite app, the log in screen will display. When you log in for the first time, please make sure you use the temporary password that was sent in the email when you registered. You will also have the option to download the 7thLite app to your laptop for access to 7thLite anytime.

View OTB and Ordering Recommendations

7thLite will provide an overview of sales forecasting based on the sales history in your store and recommendations for which products to purchase in order to meet customer demand.

Click on “OTB.” There, 7thLite will pull from your points of sale or warehouse locations in your Shopify store and determine reorder quantities and dates when variants will run out of stock.

Calculating the Forecasted Sales

7thLite uses your Shopify store’s sales history to compute the sales velocity, which is the number of units sold divided by days in stock. When we calculate your forecasted sales, 7thLite will look to reconstruct the historical data based on any stock outs that may have occurred.

Stock Outs = the number of days when a product is out of stock.

7thLite automatically detects when a product is out of stock starting from the moment you connect your store to 7thLite. This data helps to estimate the demand correctly.

Throughout the lifecycle of a Variant, the granularity of forecasting dimensions varies. Some processes need a forecast by product attribute by channel by month, while others may need a forecast by Variant / Color / Size by day.

7thLite utilizes a combination of built-in data analytics and forecasting techniques such as:

Fashion / New Reorder product forecasting cannot rely on its own historical data, because it didn’t exist before. One solution to this issue is Case Based Reasoning (CBR):

7thLite will reconstruct historical sales to take into account any lost sales and add them back into the forecast.

7thLite’s AI and Machine Learning techniques continually analyze all sales and inventory data to update the forecasting models giving the best possible forecast recommendation.

Determining Reorder Quantities

The 7thLite framework will automatically determine whether a Variant should be a Chase item (multiple deliveries) or a One Shot item based on the initial performance of the Variant. Each Variant is analyzed by the 7thLite forecasting engine following this lifecycle.

Once sales data is captured, the 7thLite forecasting engine executes the following steps.

Multiple algorithms are applied to each Variant forecasting an upper and lower forecast of demand. Each of the forecasting models are then evaluated against the upper and lower demand forecasts and the system will select the “winning” model.

The 7thLite forecasting engine utilizes three (3) models and then determines the best model for the Variant.

1. Prophet Model (+ holiday effect)

2. ARIMA Model (Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average)

3. ES Model (Exponential Smoothing)

Once the winning model is selected, the system will determine if this Variant is a Chase (multiple delivery) item or a One Shot item.

After 7thLite generates the In-season reorder total quantity, the system collects the sales by Variant/size from the POS Sales. 7thLite will breakdown the Reorder Qty. to size using the sales data by size as a “% to total” for each size.