The use of data within a retail environment is constantly changing, leading to the majority of companies describing themselves as “data rich, insight poor”. Unless retail businesses provide solutions that are designed to enable human decision making, provide the required levels of flexibility and ensure usability, meeting the needs of their customers will become harder than ever.
As data availability grows, the demand for more granular and frequent analysis is pressurizing business teams to centralize data, to create ‘one version of the truth’. This pressure has been common place over the last several years; however, the key difference now, is that users are demanding insight, not purely a data repository. The time required to analyse large volumes of data in order to identify opportunities and potential threats, is considered time wasted. This area of the business requires automation in order to free up valuable resources, so that they may utilize this time making business decisions and driving strategy. It is clear that business insight is starting to evolve.
This pressure and new levels of expectations are leading to three key challenges within the industry:
- I need flexible insight that identifies opportunity or areas of concern, as I don’t have time for data analysis
- Solutions need to be as mobile as I am
- I need specific answers delivered to me, based on my unique challenges
These pressures and key requirements are challenging organizations in relation to how they think about data, information and insight. Static reports have become too rigid within a flexible, constantly changing environment, and data deep-dives, far too time consuming. In some cases we have become a mobile workforce and it is no longer acceptable to only glean insight when sat behind a desk in the office. Social media has evolved our expectations that information needs to be delivered directly to us, as and when it changes, or when it potentially affects my life. We have started to expect the same within the business world.
So what is the answer?
It is clear that what is needed is pro-active analytics, designed specifically to meet the need of the individual user and the role that they fulfill, whether that be category manager, brand manager, business unit lead, or merchandising / marketing executive. That information needs to be readily available and in a format that makes the identification of opportunities or risk, simple to consume.
Tags: business insight, data analysis, data analytics, data deep-dives, data insights, retail, retail insights
The key is to utilize solutions that can have a common platform to drive consistency and high-levels of adoption, whilst providing the ability to ‘plug and play’ additional data sources in the future. This ensures that there isn’t the need for constant additional installations and I.T. complexity and that the business can scale and grow based on requirement and R.O.I.
Category Managers, Buyers are being pulled into many directions every day. In most cases they work on several subcategories and rely on the vendors to provide them with the intimate details that deep dive analytics can provide. Simple, intuitive, and actionable reports are what manufactureres and retailers need to be successfull on a daily basis.
In today’s world it is not enough to be reactive about data, but is necessary to be proactive, with data tailored to the user.
Great post Shawn. Once of the key points you spoke about was understanding those key challenges, its important to note that those questons are often delivered from different areas of a organization. An executive for example will look to getting insights at more of a topline level, where maybe a Sales Manager could look to drilldown those insights at a more granular level.
I get alerts informing that I have a meeting coming up, tweets telling me industry news and notifications in relation to what friends are doing on Facebook. This needs to be transferred into a retail world, so that I can get access to key information that affects my job delivered to me, instead of hours of searching for it.
You’ve got a great point on the system being user role aware. Driving real insights to the right people is very dependent on the users role and focus, otherwise the system is just generating noise. Extra noise doesn’t help deal with the growing volumes of data.
Absolutely critical to gain a competitive edge in today’s retail business, is the ability to reduce complex data into bite size actionable insight, integrated into category management processes.
I constantly use my smart phone to find out what is going on with my world. There clearly is a need in the retail industry to follow suit and provide solutions that enable insight on demand in a mobile environment.
I agree. The ever increasing quantity of data and the speed with which it is acquired demands proactive analytics. Once that is achieved the insights will be invaluable.
Companies that can leverage data analysis to quickly react to what is happening in the market place have a big competitive advantage over their competitors. Great blog post!
Real, full featured analytics solutions like those described in this article do not just grow on trees. It can be quite tough to find a flexible solution that gives a company everything they need and want – especially in the list of dinosaur analytics solutions out there. In the years to come, I think we can expect to see a new breed of data analysis solutions like no other – the user base is demanding it.
An insight into business means innovative and intuitive knowledge gathered from different sources of data/information Business information based on real facts and robust data which is analyzed/derived keeping in mind the unique needs of the businesses …is essential to everyone in the industry like business executives , managers etc.. who require it for boosting their business actions and decision-making. Need is to provide accurate and user friendly business information with ease, and in real-time with least complexity.
Mobility is a huge concern today! When looking for a reporting solution I want something that I can check on the go. I want an application that is easy-to-use and accurate.
I think it’s definitely important to cater the insights experience to the user. It helps to weed out any information they may deem irrelevant, and to allow for a much more concise and meaningful experience for the end user.
Interactive visualization should be considered.
It brings capabilities that enable decision makers to dynamically explore ideas.
IBM’s CEO Ginny Rometty just gave a speech where she predicted three big technology shifts in the future (http://ow.ly/iG9lt). Insights on Demand covers two of them: Data Analytics revolutionizing decision making, and customer segments ceding to the individual. ToolBox seems poised to knock both of those out of the park.
Having a hand held device (tablet) coupled with a reporting system that would deliver the reports to the users hands while they stood in the store (or even the aisle) would be invaluable. It would give the user insight while being “in sight” of the product.
A lot of retailers and manufacturers waste time digging for the answer in multiple pieces of software and legacy systems. The optimum solution requires all data but most importantly ‘instant insights’ that provides direction. Data is the new oil, but if you can’t benefit from the resource it is useless. Having analysts focusing on what to do with the insights instead of mining for them is key.
We should check some data mining techniques which may bring us some insights we will never think of in the future.
Completely agree. These solutions will not only deliver business and retail insights on demand, but “quantify” the opportunity and risks to the business. What are the distribution gaps costing my business? What is the growth opportunity for the category segment? What is the impact of speed to market for new innovation? These data analytics will allow the user to prioritize strategies and programs to achieve the greatest R.O.I.
Excellent point on quantifying the opportunities/risks – that is the only way to get to prioritization.
Love the point about flexibility and Usability, all consumable in a timeline that is always too much. When doing analysis, it’s often easy to just put every fact in a big table and hope in the end you have something that is insightful. That fails on a number of levels – it’s hard to understand, it often takes a long time, and it’s hard to actually get any information about it. Usability is key – even in-house – if it’s too onerous to use, it’s not going to be used.
This is the good news for everyone, third party and manufacturer and whoever using the data, all can be found in one central place, and with precise insight so they can make proper actions.
There is definitely a need for a solution that is as flexible as the industry and mobile applications need to be at the center of it.
Tailoring the experience for a particular role is key to so many things: socialization, increased ROI and user satisfaction come to mind right off the bat. Add single sign-on and you have an integrate solution that meets the needs of the business and the individual. Great post!
I believe the future is less data more insights via solutions like the google approach. On demand driven by key facts. If I want to know how to drive growth tell me the path.
We come across a lot of customers who have invested heavily in centralizing data in order to improve reporting. However, they still have the challenge of making sense of a lot of information. It seems most users expect data to be transformed into logical insight that aids their role within the business
I believe in a recent blog there was a mention of data being the newest valuable resource. In the developing on demand society, providing insightful data analytics is a priceless skill to have.
Great article! In today’s information based society, the various stakeholders want insights faster than ever. Gone are the days of spending days preparing category reviews.
We’ve progressively trained ourselves to extend our periphera vision.
We will have to challenge ourselves to isolate only the core metrics needed to make desicisions and only key functionality as the screens become smaller again.
Exception based reporting to give the user exactly what is relevant to them is key to getting usage and results from reporting systems.
I’m a busy professional always on the road. I need a mobile solution that delivers on what I need to see not what is neat to see.
Actionable information just a click away is what is required in today’s retail environment.
In today’s Internet connected world where we have access to so much information in our finger tips it’s more important than ever to be agile and proactive.
When it comes to retail insights I subscribe to the notion of “I don’t know, what I don’t know”. Meaning, I consider it a success when a solution instantly provides me with data analytic based on prior knowledge of my category and accounts. Like a suit, a tailored made insight is a wondrous thing.
As an IT developer, I’m excited with where things are going with business intelligence solutions. We are changing people’s live making it easier for them in their daily work.
Relevant, roll-based, actionable insights, pushed to the user to alert them to the items that need their attention. This is what is required for the new pace of business.
This is why ToolBox has an advantage in the market place with Advantage. It’s obvious that most Business Intelligence solutions on the market either require a user who is a data expert or provide reports that cannot be analysed at all. Having solutions that provide key insight to business questions, enable our customers to drive better decisions and react to opportunities quickly.
Nice post! Also big challenges on the technological side as well. The massive amount of data, the complexity of the calculations, and the multiple views of the results all add up to this scenario.
Having data tailored to your job and what you generally might need to accomplish will fill the 90th percentile of use cases. However, a greater need for flexibility will be required if only for curiosity and data exploration. An executive may be trying to dig deeper than he/she needs to; and shouldn’t be blocked on a need to know basis. The way you describe this system seems to cater to that, and looks to avoid necessarily separating people into restrictive data buckets.
A “press of the button” on the fly presentation generator would be beneficial here. One that highlights opportunities so the user can analyze the data rather than spending the time pulling the data.
This instant, mobile, role based insight needs to include consumer / loyalty data – which can be very big data. Processing this big data fast and insightful will separate the top analytic solution providers from the rest of the industry.
Excellent point, the ability to view data in this way is a key driver for sales. With the flexibility of the solutions being offered and the support for multiple platforms being offered I’m very excited about the future of data insights!
Looking at your opportunity cost of time spent gathering data, where you can ‘click a button’ that highlights what impacted your sales and help you make corrective actions. What better way!
I see this every day when talking to executives in the C.P.G industry. The difficulty of Integrating multiple data sources into “Best in Class” insight scorecards and reports for their category management department. The bottom line for these companies are to improve their category performance as easily and quickly as possible. Great dialog!!
Reading this article one can think about future business insights based on automated data deep dives that will bring great value to retail businesses.
Clustering, consumer segmentation, trial and repeat rates and product’s demographic appeal are all measures that are now available almost on demand. Easy access to this data can provide revolutionary insights into consumer behaviour
tester…
Really successfully written guide. It will be beneficial to anybody who usess it, along with me. Keep doing what you are providing for sure i will have a look at more posts….
There are a couple of challenges we will face.
Customers are often weary of releasing their precious data into the “Cloud” (even though in most cases unknown to them it’s likely already in some private cloud).
The other challenge I see is that we are in an age where we are flooded with alerts of all kinds, on every social network and/or mailbox.
The challenge of grabbing someone’s attention with relevant info is big.