AI is everywhere right now. When I attended the Analytics Unite conference in Chicago earlier this spring, AI was almost a bad word by the end of the breakout sessions, with speakers apologizing for ‘yet another AI mention.’ To me, that’s just how inescapable AI has become in just few short years in retail & CPG data and analytics.
Teams across retail are experimenting with GenAI tools like ChatGPT to summarize zoning documents, draft briefs, or automate internal tasks. But here’s the hard truth: while 64% of large retailers report having implemented AI and another 22% are piloting it (NVIDIA, 2024), most of that activity stays stuck at the edge — not in the core workflows that actually drive site and store location decisions.
At the same time, physical stores still account for over 81% of U.S. retail sales. And with formats like BOPIS hubs, service centers, and showrooming on the rise, picking the right location — and assigning the right role to that location — has never been more complex.
If your location data is still scattered across spreadsheets, PDFs, CRM exports, and GIS tools, AI won’t help. First, you need structure. Then, you can start making smarter, faster, and more strategic decisions about where to go next.
GenAI Can’t Work with Junk
To make AI useful in real estate planning, you need structured, high-quality data. That’s where most site selection workflows fall apart.
Site-level data is notoriously fragmented. Lease terms are buried in PDFs. Traffic patterns are stored in separate GIS files. Demographics live in third-party dashboards. And internal sales performance might still be pulled monthly via Excel. None of it is standardized, synced, or accessible in a way an AI model can use.
You can’t forecast accurately. You can’t run comparisons. You can’t feed a large language model meaningful prompts when the data you’re using is still full of inconsistencies, gaps, or contradictions.
AI doesn’t fix messy data. It magnifies it.
What You Actually Need: An AI-Ready Location Data Pipeline
Before you start asking AI to recommend new markets or simulate store performance, your data needs to be clean, connected, and structured. This is where Alteryx comes in.
Alteryx gives real estate and strategy teams the ability to:
- Connect to all the key sources: Snowflake, Salesforce, Excel, foot traffic APIs, lease management tools, and more
- Clean and geocode raw location data to standardize addresses and assign spatial coordinates
- Blend internal and external datasets into a unified view of location potential, cost, demand, and performance
- Automate repeatable workflows for site scoring, trade area analysis, and demographic overlays
- Output AI-ready datasets that can feed predictive models, LLM prompts, or dashboards in Tableau or Power BI
With Alteryx, you don’t just prepare the data. You operationalize it — so your models don’t just run once, they run at scale.
Let AI Amplify Your Analysts — Not Replace Them
Once the data foundation is solid, AI becomes a real asset. Alteryx lets you embed LLMs directly into workflows, enabling your team to:
- Summarize long-form zoning or market reports
- Flag anomalies in site performance or competitive positioning
- Generate plain-language narratives that explain the “why” behind a location score
- Draft custom recommendations based on structured data inputs
This isn’t about automating away the analyst. It’s about giving them time back to focus on strategic work, not spreadsheet stitching.
Everyone in retail is talking about AI. But the teams who win in site selection will be the ones who use it where it matters most—forecasting site performance, identifying expansion opportunities, and aligning stores to evolving customer behavior.
Alteryx helps you get there. It turns messy, inconsistent location data into a clean, trusted pipeline that AI can actually work with. The result? Better site decisions. Faster expansion cycles. And a smarter approach to every square foot you invest in.
Ready to make your location data AI-ready?
Check out our Retail Starter Kit and Spatial Starter Kit to get you started. They’re packed with workflows, templates, and tools to help your team prep, blend, and activate site data for smarter decisions.