KPMG’s Dash transforms more than six billion external data points into intuitive location intelligence for retailers. Its maps and dashboards have helped analyse 400 potential sites in days, supported approximately £400 million of planned investment, and identified opportunities worth up to £172 million in additional in-store sales.
Choosing where to open, close, or reshape a retail site is a high-value decision complicated by an abundance of information. Demographics, spending patterns, footfall, competitors, existing stores, and potential cannibalisation can all influence performance. When those insights sit across fragmented sources, however, understanding the complete picture can become a slow, manual exercise.
KPMG’s Dash tackles that problem by turning complex location data into a visual story designed around the fundamental question: is this the right location to invest in?
Turning Billions of Data Points into One Story
Dash’s Location Module combines an organisation’s own information with more than six billion external data points, bringing the resulting insights together through interactive maps and dashboards.
Instead of asking users to interpret raw datasets, Dash presents information including predicted revenue, demographics, spending behaviour, footfall, competition, and cannibalisation as a coherent view of a location’s potential. AI helps surface relevant information, while interactive maps allow users to investigate both what is happening and why.
That accessibility means location decisions extend beyond specialist analytics teams. Property, commercial, and marketing stakeholders need to be able to interpret the same evidence, compare opportunities, and reach decisions together.
“A robust commercial product that clearly demonstrates the power of visual mapping in data storytelling. By combining internal client data with 6 billion external data points, Dash provides a highly interactive spatial narrative for location planning. The real-world impact metrics provided are incredibly strong.” – Judges’ comments
Visualisation Built Around the Decision
A central challenge was recognising that there is no universal definition of a good retail location. For example, a convenience retailer might prioritise footfall and frequency, while another organisation may place greater weight on affluence or brand alignment. Dash allows users to define what success looks like for their organisation.
Existing sites can be selected as comparators, while users can specify targets such as preferred demographic characteristics. Dash assesses potential locations against factors including spending, footfall, competition, and cannibalisation, presenting the results visually.
Suggested locations help users navigate thousands of possibilities. Sites can be filtered by characteristics such as retail park or high street, providing a starting point for exploration rather than requiring users to know where to look.
Underpinning those visualisations are revenue prediction models continuously tuned by KPMG’s data science team and validated with clients, with accuracy consistently exceeding 90%.
From Visual Insight to Investment
Dash’s effectiveness comes from the decisions its visualisations have enabled. As an example, following the collapse of a competitor, one retailer needed to assess potential sites rapidly. Dash helped it:
- Analyse more than 400 potential locations in a matter of days.
- Secure 70 new locations within three weeks, rather than relying on a process that traditionally took months.
Elsewhere, Dash helped a leading UK supermarket reassess its store format and expansion strategy. The resulting evidence supported approximately £400 million of planned investment and gave the retailer confidence to increase the size of new stores by around 20%.
For another leading UK retailer, visualising the impact of openings and closures across 200 stores challenged existing assumptions about how revenue transferred between locations. The resulting estate strategy identified the potential for up to £172 million in additional in-store sales.
These outcomes demonstrate the difference between presenting data and communicating it effectively. Dash does not remove complexity by removing information but rather organises billions of data points around the decisions people need to make.
KPMG has demonstrated the value of data storytelling at its most practical by making complex evidence understandable enough to challenge assumptions, aligning stakeholders, and giving organisations the confidence to act.
