Introducing PredictHQ Notifications: Instant alerts about anomalies impacting your demand

Published on July 28, 2020
Campbell Brown
CEO & Co-Founder

As COVID-19 began spreading across the globe, it was clear everything was about to change. Watching it spread and the chaos it was causing, we decided to build and launch our Notifications platform early because we knew it would be useful in not only navigating the intense disruption now but for managing future disruptions and also adapting to areas of opportunity. Its premise is simple: businesses need a way to proactively know about new events, reschedules, cancellations as well as peak demand days within minutes so they can respond in the most strategic way.

Our new Notifications platform enables users to create configurations and receive instant alerts about new events, groupings of events or changes to events that drive demand.

This intelligence is already in our constantly-updated demand intelligence API so this platform is about enabling customers to quickly set up notifications, enabling them to hear about these updates instantly.

Almost every business in the world realized firsthand in March how significant demand causal factors like events are. An unprecedented surge in major attended event cancellations and postponements swept the globe, and tracking their new dates became a priority for our customers, just as it is now as attended events come back in different shapes, sizes and locations. As the pandemic continued, many events continued and tracking these demand catalysts offered a unique opportunity to adapt to new demand trends such as pent up demand being released from the easing of shelter in place in some countries.

Ongoing event types that have caused incremental or decremental demand impact include:

  • Lockdowns starting and easing as well as our newly launched Health Warnings category

  • School holidays

  • Public holidays and observances

  • Unscheduled events such as severe weather and natural disasters

The rate of new events, rescheduled events, ongoing unscheduled events as well as lockdowns starting, updating and easing (all of which PredictHQ tracks) needed a “no code” solution that could quickly provide rapid, virtually instant alerts so businesses could adapt to demand more efficiently as they plan their recovery in these chaotic times.

Our API has been popular with data scientists and engineers, but in light of COVID-19’s impact we expedited our Notifications platform to democratize our demand intelligence to everyone from operational managers to chief revenue officers. Our Notifications platform exists so teams can react as swiftly and strategically as possible to changing situations. Here’s how it works.

Access instant notifications of incoming demand impact without writing a single line of code

Our Notifications platform enables teams to set up alerts that are delivered immediately within our intuitive user interface , as well as in an instant, daily or weekly digest email. Trackable changes through our Notifications platform include:

  • When new events are scheduled and first announced

  • When existing events are rescheduled or locations are changed

  • When an area passes a threshold of aggregate impact caused by a cluster of events

  • When warnings such as health warnings or severe weather warnings are issued, updated or resolved.

Users can build their own targeted notifications from on any of the above changes based on what impacts their demand. 

You can set up notifications that will directly inform your strategies to tap into different occurrences of demand, and minimize waste during quieter periods. You can set up notifications in about two minutes, share them with team mates and replicate them for different locations, such as per store or distribution center. For example:

  • Operational managers who help individual stores set staffing and stocking expectations can set up alerts for clusters of small events that have passed a threshold of combined impact that will create very busy days. 

  • Supply chain managers at consumer packaged good companies can set up notifications for whenever there is a health advisory or lockdown event triggered within their geographic areas, so their team can immediately start making preparations and scaling resources to cope with changes in demand.

  • Hotel revenue managers can set up notifications within a predefined radius around specific hotels to catch the first announcement of potentially impactful event-driven demand occurring nearby, and months in advance. Adjusting prices to increase yield

  • Transport operations managers can set up alerts for when events or clusters of events are predicted to finish, to be sure there are enough drivers and assets in position ready to meet demand.

  • Quick serve restaurants and food retail services can set up alerts for when community sports events or local concerts are scheduled near their stores, as well as alerts for when major sports events and concerts are rescheduled.

And this is only a handful of use cases. We’ve outlined more in this blog post to spark your imagination. Notifications enables a far wider subset of a business to know when and where any impactful event has been scheduled or rescheduled, taking the guesswork out of identifying and optimizing for their demand catalysts.

We expedited this product out to market because it will enable companies to make smart decisions quickly and navigate the COVID-19 chaos more smoothly. Many teams are having to adapt to a world where demand patterns are changing and previous playbooks are obsolete. We hope Notifications brings much needed clarity to spotting and using demand causal factors to create dynamic and resilient recovery strategies.