Beacon was built to eliminate the gap between data and decisions. It connects every dimension of an ecommerce business — sales, forecasting, advertising, operations, and content — into a single, intelligent platform.
This release takes it further. Ask Advisor is now available directly within Beacon, from the search bar or any chart. For teams already using Ask Advisor in Atlas to monitor the competitive landscape, Beacon brings the same capability inside the business, turning internal performance data into answers that are ready to act on.
What brands are asking
Beacon users are managing some of the most complex questions in ecommerce. Questions that span multiple modules, every major retailer, and hundreds of SKUs. Ask Advisor is built to answer all of them. Here's how three of the most common Beacon roles are putting it to work. The prompts below are drawn from real workflows, organized by role.
To get started, type any question directly into the Beacon search bar, or click the ellipsis on any chart and select Ask Advisor. Advisor launches instantly in a new window with the question loaded and ready.
Ecommerce Manager
Ecommerce managers own overall channel performance — sales growth, margin, competitive positioning, and conversion across the digital shelf. Ask Advisor prompts for this role tend to be broader and more strategic, focused on understanding what's driving performance and where the biggest opportunities lie.
"Our margin on this SKU has declined over the last 90 days. Can you break down what's driving it? Is it pricing, promotional frequency, advertising spend, or something else? What should we address first?"
Advisor synthesizes pricing trends, promotional frequency, inbound shipping costs, and advertising efficiency to pinpoint exactly where margin is being lost and prioritizes what to fix.
"Which products are underperforming against their 52-week forecast and what's the projected revenue impact if the trend continues?"
Advisor cross-references actual sales performance against forecast across the catalog, surfacing the highest-risk SKUs and quantifying what's at stake if the trend goes unaddressed.
"Our conversion rate has declined over the last 60 days. Is this specific to our brand or is the category seeing the same trend? How does our decline compare to key competitors?"
Advisor pulls internal conversion data from Beacon alongside category and competitive benchmarks from Atlas, giving a complete picture in a single response.
Pro tip: Ask for a recommendation, not just data. Ending a prompt with "what should we do about it?" shifts Advisor from reporting mode into analytical mode, and produces answers that are ready to act on, not just read.
Inventory Planner
Inventory planners need to anticipate demand, prevent stockouts, and align supply with promotional and seasonal cycles, often without a clear window into how category trends or competitive shifts will affect velocity. Ask Advisor gives planners the forward-looking signal they need before it shows up in the numbers.
"Based on our current inventory levels and recent sales velocity, when are we projected to run out of stock? We need 35 days of lead time for our retailer to reorder from direct import."
Combines sell-through rates with inventory data to flag risk windows before they become stockout events, giving supply chain teams the lead time needed to act.
"We're planning to participate in an upcoming promotional event for this product line. Based on last year's category lift and our current inventory position, what sell-through rate should we plan for and are we sufficiently stocked?"
Connects historical promotional performance to current inventory levels, giving planners a data-grounded answer to the most common pre-event question.
"We're projecting a stockout on this SKU in the next 30 days. Are competitors currently in stock, and could this be an opportunity to capture share before we replenish?"
Advisor cross-references Beacon inventory and velocity data with Atlas competitor availability, turning a supply chain risk into a potential strategic opportunity.
Pro tip: Include lead time requirements directly in the prompt. For example, "we need 35 days of notice for direct import." Advisor will incorporate this into its forecasting and flag risk windows accordingly.
Media Manager
Media managers are responsible for allocating retail media budgets, optimizing campaigns, and proving ROI to leadership. The best Ask Advisor prompts for this role connect ad spend directly to sales outcomes and help build the case for where to invest next.
"We have $1.5M to spend on retail media next quarter. Based on our current sales velocity and category share of voice, how should we allocate budget across our top products to maximize return?"
Advisor maps spend against share of voice gaps and sales conversion data to return a prioritized allocation recommendation — not just a spend split.
"Identify our top SKUs with strong traffic but below-average conversion rates. For each, recommend the highest-impact areas where increasing investment could improve conversion."
Surfaces high-leverage opportunities across the catalog, without a manual audit.
"Our ROAS has declined this quarter. Is the category seeing broader ad efficiency challenges, or are competitors outspending us in key placements?"
Advisor combines Beacon ad performance data with Atlas share of voice and competitive spend trends, connecting internal results to external market dynamics in a single answer.
Pro tip: Always give Advisor a budget figure, a timeframe, and a specific retailer when asking media questions. The more specific the inputs, the more actionable the output.
The data behind every answer
Ask Advisor doesn't just answer questions about Beacon data, it synthesizes across both Beacon and Atlas in a single response. That means internal performance data — forecasts, margin, operations, advertising — can be read alongside the competitive landscape simultaneously. The result is a complete picture of the business, not just one side of it.
Beacon gives Advisor an unmatched foundation to work from — 52-week SKU-level forecasts, full-funnel advertising analytics across every major retail media network, waterfall attribution that traces every dollar of revenue back to its source, real-time operations data spanning chargebacks, inventory, and supply chain, and content and organic performance across Amazon, Walmart, and beyond. When a question is asked, Advisor synthesizes across all of it, and returns an answer that's ready to act on.
The data has always been in Beacon. Now it answers back.
