By Scott Pethuyne | July 31, 2025

No-Code Platform Solves Multi-Step Retail Challenges, Transforming Loss Prevention and Inventory Management

Retail operations generate vast amounts of data every day. This data, which includes sales transactions, inventory levels, customer interactions, and employee actions, holds the key to understanding and resolving operational issues. However, traditional data analysis methods often fall short, struggling to address the multi-step nature of many retail problems.

Consider the issue of refund fraud. In my years as a retailer, identifying fraudulent refunds involved multiple steps. Retailers often needed to track discounted employee purchases, monitor credit card usage, and cross-reference these with refund transactions.

Traditionally, this process required labor-intensive manual efforts, as disparate data sources needed connection to uncover fraudulent activities. For example, an employee might perform fraudulent refunds using their own credit cards after making purchases.

Canvas, a new feature in the Workcloud Actionable Intelligence platform, simplifies this process by linking data on employee transactions with refund analytics, automatically flagging suspicious activities for investigation.

Move Faster, Act Smarter

Canvas is a no-code, drag-and-drop analytics module that helps teams move faster and act smarter by building queries across systems, detecting anomalies, and automating workflows. Canvas gives retailers a new edge in loss prevention and inventory management, enabling teams to accelerate their processes and make more informed decisions.

By seamlessly linking data points across systems, Canvas empowers teams to identify phantom inventory, flag suspicious transactions, and resolve shrinkage faster, all while enhancing operational efficiency. This innovative platform streamlines the process of identifying and resolving intricate multi-step business problems without writing a single line of code, helping retailers uncover phantom inventory, flag suspicious transactions, and resolve shrink faster.

Changing the Game for Retail

Canvas enables users to visually link various steps of a problem within a single platform. This capability allows retailers to construct complex queries that connect data points across different systems, effectively telling the story of the problem and identifying solutions in a streamlined manner.

One compelling aspect of Canvas is its ability to transform the problem-solving process. What once required months of professional services now lies within the direct control of the end user. By linking data such as void activity at the point of sale and inventory discrepancies, Canvas provides actionable insights that users can deploy on-demand, significantly reducing the time and effort required to address complex issues.

For instance, Canvas allows retailers to integrate RFID data with point-of-sale transactions to identify discrepancies in inventory. If an associate shows a high number of voids and simultaneous inventory shortages, Canvas can automatically correlate these data points, flagging potential fraud or operational issues for quick resolution.

Smarter Decisions with No Extra Cost

A case study shows the significance of Canvas’ impact on retailers today. A few years ago, Walgreens, one of America’s largest pharmacy chains, implemented Zebra’s Workcloud Actionable Intelligence. The result was significant financial savings and operational improvements.

With Canvas, at no extra cost, tasks that once took months of professional services are now directly manageable by the end user—all without writing a single line of code.

Beyond Retail

While Canvas predominantly serves the retail sector, its potential extends far beyond. Canvas integrates diverse data sets, positioning itself to solve complex problems across various industries, including manufacturing, healthcare, and logistics.

For example, in manufacturing, Canvas can help detect and resolve discrepancies in production processes, such as identifying defects linked to specific production steps, thereby preventing faulty products from reaching customers.

The Future of Intelligent Operations

As business leaders navigate the challenges of the modern enterprise, tools such as Canvas offer hope. By simplifying the complexity of data analysis and enhancing the speed and accuracy of decision-making, Zebra helps them transform their operations and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

In industries where every second counts, the ability to quickly adapt to changing conditions and resolve asset visibility and other issues efficiently proves invaluable. With Canvas, business leaders can solve multi-step problems, while pioneering a new era of intelligent, data-driven operations.

Topics
Blog, Field Operations, Manufacturing, Retail, Warehouse and Distribution, Digitizing Workflows,

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