Retailers now swim in more data than they know what to do with. And they’re working overtime to digest that data — collected from e-commerce transactions and via merchandising, CRM and POS systems — to glean useful insights.
Here are 5 important ways retail and data work hand in hand:
1. Throughout the supply chain
Data is helping retailers obtain end-to-end visibility of their supply chains, which helps improve quality control efforts, among other things, says Jim Hayden, vice president of solutions at Savi, which offers sensor analytics systems. “Companies now use data to track and trace in-transit goods throughout the supply chain, in real time,” he says.
2. In the fitting room
Several retailers, including Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom, have tested “smart” fitting room mirrors that can collect information on customer shopping habits and make recommendations. That data can also help retailers understand how customers react to products, says Oliver Guy, global retail industry director at Software AG.
3. For personnel decisions
Thanks to POS data and data collected via mobile devices, retailers have more information about the performance of their sales associates than ever before, says Wong. The metrics include number of customers assisted, average response time and cross-sell frequency, and that data is available by region, store or department, and even for individual employees. “This kind of granularity of performance has allowed retailers to start optimizing the labor model in stores and measuring results,” he says.
4. On the selling floor
Thanks to the wealth and granularity of data available these days — and the speed at which it is collected — retailers can now gain immediate insights into what is selling and what is not selling, right on the sales floor.
Interactive mobile devices in stores offer an important way for retailers to engage customers and collect data about what shoppers are looking for in certain areas, says Paige Handza, retail solutions manager in the end-user computing unit at VMware. That data “can also help the retailer make smarter decisions about what product to place where,” she says, noting that an added benefit of mobile point-of-sale kiosks is that they can make transactions more efficient by allowing shoppers to check out from any location within the store.
5. In personalization and targeting
Despite having tremendous quantities of big data and aggregate information on their overall clientele, retailers often capture only small amounts of data on specific individuals, says Rama Ramakrishnan, a senior vice president and chief data scientist at Demandware. “Many retailers face this somewhat counter intuitive ‘little data’ problem,” he says. But thanks to the latest in predictive intelligence based on up-to-the-second data, retailers can leverage data science to personalize content for individual consumers — even those who haven’t shopped at their stores or websites very often.
(Source: Network Asia)