New Phocas Analytics brings distribution intelligence into all decisions

AI is opening new possibilities for distributors to ask questions of their data and put analysis within everyone’s reach. Phocas brings those capabilities into our New Analytics experience, designed around the industry’s data and workflows.

The New Phocas Analytics experience helps distributors keep pace with what’s changing through AI-powered exploration, deeper analysis, more powerful dashboards and flexible ad hoc reporting.

At the center of the experience is Workspaces, powered by PACE (Phocas Agentic and Conversational Engine) giving people a conversational way to investigate challenges and uncover opportunities.

The change to New Phocas Analytics is an expansion of Phocas’ distribution intelligence capabilities.

Your data, dashboards and data in the same platform

Investigating business performance can involve switching between systems, downloading data and explaining the background to a question in a separate AI tool. Each move adds work and can make it harder for colleagues to follow how someone reached a conclusion.

New Phocas Analytics brings AI, dashboards and reporting into the platform teams already use. People can start with a dashboard, investigate a question through Workspaces or refine their own analysis in the grid. Everything is grounded in the same consolidated ERP and business data with permissions, business context and security controls already in place.

In a time when there is so much software available, distributors don't need to add more. They can stay within the platform they already trust, drill from summaries to transactional data and analyze across departments to understand what they need to know, and how that change might impact decision-making.

Workspaces powered by PACE

Workspaces lets people ask questions in everyday language and receive instant answers or summaries based on their Phocas data.

The conversational analytics develops as the investigation progresses. You might start with a broad question about branch performance, then ask which customers or products contributed to a loss then follow up to examine a particular result or explore an anomaly. Workspaces maintains the context of the conversation, allowing people to add new variables without restating the background data each time.

Direct integration with the Phocas data platform lets teams explore the supporting detail, while confidence scores help them review answers. Calculations run within the customer’s own data platform and results can be represented as numbers, reports or dashboards.

Phocas’ distribution experience informs how Workspaces PACE interprets questions and investigates answers, including how products are classified and how the business operates across branches. Workspaces also builds context about the individual user, their role and their organization as they use it. This shapes analysis around the business and the person asking, while existing permissions govern what data they can access.

New Dashboards

Dashboards give teams a shared place to monitor performance and identify what needs closer attention. The new dashboard experience provides more control over how that information is organized, presented and maintained.

Multiple tabs let people bring related views together. A branch dashboard, for example, could organize sales, margin and inventory performance into separate tabs, making it easier to review different aspects of the operation within one dashboard.

Greater control over layout and formatting helps dashboard creators emphasize the measures their audience needs. Teams can also use their business’ brand colors and logo to create a consistent presentation.

PDF printing provides another way to bring performance information into management meetings, branch reviews and other business conversations. These improvements help teams create dashboards that suit their responsibilities and communicate findings clearly.

Ad hoc reporting that follows your questions 

Some questions need hands-on analysis. A purchasing manager may want to compare suppliers, or a finance controller might want to examine different monthly comparisons of marketing costs. The new Analytics, developed from Flex Modes makes it easier to build and adjust that analysis directly in the grid.

People can customize columns in any mode, add measures and calculations and see changes immediately. Data from multiple streams can sit in a single grid. Teams can build and edit formulas as they work, reference other calculations and include numeric properties, such as customer credit limits, to extend their analysis.

When a result needs closer examination, people can open the transactions behind a specific value without leaving their analysis. They can then add properties, calculations and filters to the transaction grid to understand the detail.

The redesigned conditional formatting helps important values stand out. Top and bottom filters offer another way to focus quickly on the strongest or weakest performers.

Date and filtering improvements also make saved analysis more useful. Period-to-date comparisons work across all period types, while rolling dates in advanced filters keep saved views aligned with the current period without manual date changes.

Alerts help teams continue monitoring after the initial investigation and people can create an alert based on any column in a favorite, including a calculation and choose to receive a notification only when a value crosses a specified threshold. Flexible subscription schedules help deliver updates at any stage in the cycle.

Extending intelligence across a distribution business 

New Phocas Analytics connects the different ways distributors understand performance. Dashboards show what is happening. Ad hoc reporting helps people examine the detail. Workspaces adds conversation, context and narrative insight to the investigation.

For distributors, the value is practical as sales teams can investigate changing customer behavior, purchasing can examine inventory patterns and finance can explore the commercial consequences.

Together, these capabilities support Phocas’ broader development program spanning AI-assisted recommendations and task automation. The strategy builds on the platform’s connected data and distribution expertise, bringing more intelligence into the work teams already do.