20 Retail Questions, Answered Instantly

Written by Novasoft

Microsoft and LS Retail Diamond Partner | UAE and KSA | May 2026 | 6 min read

RETAIL INTELLIGENCE PLAIN ENGLISH AI LS CENTRAL

20 Retail Questions You Can Now Ask in Plain English

Questions that used to take days of report preparation - answered in seconds by Retail Co-Pilot inside LS Central.

For decades, retail decision-making has depended on a small group of analysts and IT specialists who can translate business questions into SQL queries, BI dashboards, and Excel pivots. Retail Co-Pilot eliminates the translation layer - any user can ask a real retail question in plain English and receive a complete, current answer drawn from live LS Central data.

The 20 Questions, Grouped by Role

Below are twenty representative questions Retail Co-Pilot answers daily across UAE and KSA retail operations - organised by the role most likely to ask them. Each question is asked in plain English. Each answer is generated in seconds, with no IT involvement and no report request queue.

CEO QUESTIONS

Group-Level Strategic View

Consolidated questions across companies, regions and time periods - the kind that previously needed five reports merged manually.

RETAIL MANAGER QUESTIONS

Operational Execution Daily

Live operational questions about today's activity - target tracking, peak hours, store comparison, exceptions across the network.

CATEGORY MANAGER QUESTIONS

Assortment and Margin Insight

Sell-through, margin, dead stock, variant performance - the assortment-level signals that drive working capital decisions.

STORE MANAGER QUESTIONS

Daily Floor Awareness

"What is happening in my store right now?" - simple, immediate questions store managers need answered while still on the shop floor.

No SQL. No Reports. No Waiting.

Every question below was, until recently, the domain of analysts, BI specialists or finance teams who could translate business needs into queries. Now any LS Central user - from CEO to cashier - can simply type the question and receive a complete answer in seconds.

No SQL knowledge. No dashboard navigation. No report request to IT. The question is the interface, and the answer is the output.

"The fastest way to make better decisions is to remove the friction between a question and an answer. Co-Pilot makes that distance zero."

20+

Real retail questions answered today

Lines of SQL required from the user

Roles served by one conversational layer

The 20 Questions in Detail

Each grouping below shows five live questions Retail Co-Pilot can answer for that role. These are not hypothetical - they reflect actual prompts asked daily by retailers running LS Central across UAE and KSA.

For the CEO - Five Strategic Questions

High-level questions across the entire group, asked any time, answered in seconds without preparing a report or convening a meeting.

>What is our group-wide month-to-date sales versus last year?

>Which subsidiary or brand has the highest profit growth this quarter?

>Where are we seeing the largest dead stock exposure across the group?

>What is the cash impact of slow-moving inventory across UAE and KSA?

>Which regions are pulling the group down on profitability this period?

For the Retail Manager - Five Operational Questions

Day-to-day execution questions about target tracking, store performance, peak hours and exceptions - all answered live, no waiting for the weekly report.

>Which stores are behind their daily target right now?

>What are peak sales hours by store this week?

>Which terminals show unusual refund or void activity today?

>How is our latest promotion performing across stores?

>Which store managers' teams have the highest sales per labour hour?

For the Category Manager - Five Assortment Questions

Margin, sell-through, transfer opportunities and SKU-level intelligence - the questions that determine how working capital is deployed across the assortment.

>Which items have had zero movement in the last 30 days?

>Which categories are above versus below margin target this period?

>Which variants are top sellers in store A but invisible in store B?

>Where can inter-store transfers free up working capital this week?

>Which slow movers should we be discounting before they age further?

For the Store Manager - Five Daily Floor Questions

Practical, immediate questions store managers ask while still close to the customer and team - answered without leaving the floor or opening Excel.

>What is my store's sales performance today?

>Which items are selling fastest in my store right now?

>Which staff member has the highest sales this week?

>Are we on track to hit today's target by closing time?

>Which fast-moving items are running critically low on stock?

The Old Way vs The Plain-English Way

Asking This Question	X Old Way	+ With Co-Pilot
"MTD sales by company?"	Five Excel exports, manual merge	One sentence, instant answer
"Where is dead stock highest?"	Custom report request to IT	Plain-English question, ranked answer
"Top cashiers by transactions?"	Manual SQL or BI dashboard build	Live ranked list in seconds
"How is the new promo doing?"	Wait for end-of-period analysis	Live uptake the moment it goes live
"Which stores are behind plan?"	Visible only at weekly review	Surfaced live, with delta to target
"Are refunds spiking anywhere?"	Spotted at month-end exception report	Flagged automatically by Co-Pilot

Why Implement with Novasoft?

Novasoft is a Diamond LS Retail Partner 2025 and certified Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central partner across UAE, KSA, India and the USA. As the creators of Retail Co-Pilot, Novasoft brings deep LS Central expertise, clean retail data architecture experience, and a rollout approach that gets most retailers live within 2 to 5 business days. The product sits inside the broader AI Solutions practice and reads Business Central tables natively. See the LS Retail product overview for the underlying retail platform.

Simple

No SQL, no dashboards - just plain-English questions

Universal

Every role from CEO to cashier asks in their own words

Instant

Live LS Central data, complete answer, in seconds

Ask Your Own Retail Questions

Book a free Retail AI Assessment and ask any of these 20 questions - or any of your own - against your live LS Central data.

Book Free Assessment Explore Capabilities

Novasoft

Microsoft & LS Retail Diamond Partner

Novasoft is a Microsoft Solutions Partner and LS Retail Diamond Partner serving customers across UAE, KSA and India.

Sales by store, hour and category	Year-on-year same-day comparisons	Live target versus actual
Cashier and terminal performance	Top and slow movers by SKU	Brand and variant analysis
Loyalty member behaviour	Promotion uptake by region	Refund and void monitoring
Tender and payment mix	Multi-company consolidation	Inter-store transfer opportunities
UAE versus KSA region comparison	Live anomaly detection	Plain-English custom queries