A Celerant Technology Corp. White Paper By Zeke Hamdani,Director of Web Services August, 2012

Transcription

1 By Zeke Hamdani,Director of Web Services August, 2012

2 Executive Overview There s a lot of hype in the industry around terms like Big Data and business intelligence, and rightfully so. McKinsey Quarterly recently suggested that harnessing the full value of Big Data that within the enterprise and beyond has the potential to increase a retailer s operating margin by more than 60%. That said, most retailers hadn t even grasped the power of their own data that gathered within the four walls of their enterprises when the Big Data phenomenon took the industry by storm. Among the data most treasured, but least understood by retailers is that collected online. In fact, the report E-Commerce 2012: Back To The Future from Retail Systems Research found that, even among the top-performing businesses in the retail industry, 65% of retailers consider understanding and accommodating how different customer segments engage with us their number one e-commerce operational challenge. Their second largest e-commerce challenge, difficulty coordinating with other channels to create a seamless cross-channel experience, is also a data-intensive one. Clearly, before retailers leverage the power of external sources of Big Data, they must take advantage of business intelligence tools that help them understand and profit from the information that already sits at their fingertips. An E-Commerce Dashboard For Executive Empowerment Executive buy-in and empowerment is central to the success of any initiative designed to improve operations through data access and analysis. That s why the starting point for e-commerce business intelligence initiatives is the creation of an executive-level dashboard view of key metrics that drive online operational improvement. With an integrated Web mining database and business intelligence (BI) server, Celerant e- commerce customers can easily create custom dashboard reports using the company s new, third-generation Web Mining tool. With this tool, executives get an instant, singlepage, real-time view of such key Web metrics as orders, sales versus fulfillment, high-level conversions, and top products. These reports are pre-packaged in the tool, which also provides the ability to customize and drill-down on these metrics at the category or department level. With this information at their disposal, executive decision makers can easily package user-specific reports and them to appropriate managers to incite operational improvement. But the value of Web mining goes far deeper than an executive snapshot of e-commerce performance. With roles-based parameters, disciplinespecific reports empower specific users with the deep analytics they need to understand and improve e-commerce operations. Tracking Traffic Understanding e-commerce traffic where it s coming from and how customers from specific sources interact with your site is the first step to e-commerce site optimization. With the third-generation Web Mining tool, Celerant e-commerce customers have insight into customer behavior from the minute they arrive on the site. Understanding the drivers of e- commerce site traffic has huge implications on Web promotions and advertising decisions, allowing marketers to maximize their advertising and promotions spend with the traffic drivers that produce not just the most traffic, but the traffic that s most likely to convert page views to sales. Traffic analysis also enables marketers to understand the relationship between e-commerce site point-of-entry and conversion rates. For instance, Web promotions that lead consumers to a specific page on your site can be analyzed at a level that s granular enough to understand whether the content the customer is seeing at their point of entry on your

3 site is appealing or not. With a few clicks of the mouse, marketers will understand if the content they re presenting is relevant enough to drive more page views and more conversions, or if that content is resulting in site abandonment. Creating Conversions E-commerce optimization is a granular exercise. Without insight into conversion metrics at the product level, merchandisers are ill equipped to proactively create improvement. The aforementioned study from RSR indicates that improving online merchandising and assortment is considered the most valuable e-commerce improvement opportunity by 56% of all retailers. Without deep insight into conversion metrics, assortment decisions are left to intuition. With the help of the e-commerce BI server in Celerant Web mining, merchandisers can analyze conversion metrics by customer, brand, department, category, and both search engine and on-site keywords. The tool helps merchandisers understand not just who s coming to the site and how many are converting on which products; it generates instant reports that reveal the dollar value of those conversions and, combined with traffic analysis, the cost of goods sold. While many tools provide access to traffic and conversion metrics individually, in the effort to optimize e-commerce performance it s uniquely valuable to see integrated traffic and conversion metrics. Ceasing Cart Abandonment In addition to understanding page level customer abandonment, it s extremely valuable to analyze cart abandonment to understand why consumers leave potential purchases before consummating the sale. Web Mining gives merchandisers an over the shoulder view of consumers shopping patterns, allowing them to understand what drove click-through and checkout behavior at the brand, department, or style level. Collection and analysis of this data is the only accurate means of narrowing down cart level problems that lead to abandonment. This over the shoulder view of checkout activity can help e-commerce operators isolate such specific drivers of abandonment as shipping charge sticker shock (a high rate of customers abandoning the shopping cart at the choose shipping method window) or payment insecurity (a high rate of abandonment at the payment details page). Enabling Fantastic Fulfillment Another unique advantage of an integrated and retail-specific Web Mining tool is the ability to analyze and improve one of the ultimate benchmarks of customer satisfaction: fulfillment performance. In today s demanding retail e-commerce environment, fast and accurate fulfillment has become a competitive differentiator that drives repeat traffic. Yet, the store-level fulfillment practices that have emerged as a result of the elimination of channel-specific inventory management has made it tricky for retailers to measure and manage fulfillment performance. Because Web Mining from Celerant tracks e-commerce performance from customer site entry through product fulfillment, retailers can use the tool to monitor fulfillment performance at the store, employee, and carrier levels. Order turnaround time can be measured by the minute, and reports that identify retailers best and worst performers can be generated instantly. With this information, retailers can establish best practices that can be implemented across their distributed store enterprises.

4 Summary: Leaders Focus On Web Mining When asked Where do you perceive the value of the following technologies? and given a set of eighteen multiple choice responses to choose from, more leading retailers participating in the RSR E-Commerce 2012 study chose online analytics (i.e. page-view analysis, source, etc) than any other technology. The advantages of an end-to-end Web Mining package that s built on a leading BI server and integrated with the enterprise retailing software package are many. To name a few: The configurable fields-based architecture of the Celerant Web Mining tool virtually eliminates the need for custom queries, easing the burden on the retail IT department and driving profit-building efficiency. The user-friendly interface also makes it easy for non-technical users in the merchandising and marketing departments to analyze and report on key performance indicators. Improving Order Analysis Because the Celerant Web Mining Tool is unique in its direct integration with the Command Retail software package, retailers can merge enterprise inventory and Web analytics data for an accurate, real-time view of orders, sell through, and the relationship between inventory and Web traffic trends. This correlation is unique and empowers retailers with fact-based decision-making capability, which improves customer retention by helping establish the association of specific customers or customer groups with specific products, brands, and departments. For the C-suite, at-a-glance dashboard views of high-level e-commerce operations metrics which can be shared with managers via help goal setting and benchmarking across the enterprise. While many Web analytics packages exist, few are e-commerce specific and even fewer are natively integrated with the retailer s core retail systems software, providing insight into the full online customer experience from pre-site entry to fulfillment, right out of the box. Web Mining from Celerant provides granular, accurate e-commerce analytics, which drives internal efficiencies and opportunities for immeasurable customer-facing e-commerce operations improvement. Visit or contact your Celerant representative today to see how simple and inexpensive it is to bring the power of Web Mining to your e-commerce operations.

5 About Celerant Celerant Technology is a privately held Corporation, providing high quality, advanced retail management software systems to retail organizations. Celerant CEO, Ian Goldman, comes from a retail management software background and founded Celerant Technology to build an entirely new type of retail system from the ground-up. The software that resulted uses Java technology to solve data integration issues with an all-inone system, seamlessly integrating all areas of retail, in real-time. Celerant Technology is atypical when it comes to comparing it to other enterprise-solution companies. Our approach is more individually focused rather than mass-produced. In addition to traditional planning, implementation, training and support services, Celerant provides a range of customized services designed to serve the more complex retail enterprises. These services include custom development, integration with ERP and legacy systems, and integration with alternative points of presence. Celerant Technology's headquarters are located in Staten Island, New York with satellite offices in Georgia, Oklahoma, Florida, Colorado and Rhode Island. Our real-time management system, Celerant Command Retail, integrates all channels of a multichannel retail enterprise, including POS, warehouse, inventory management, sales back office, datamining, open-to-buy, mobile applications, mail order/catalog and e-commerce. Celerant s custom, sophisticated websites expertly manage and market inventory, directly from your Command Retail system, eliminating the need to re-enter data, including product descriptions, customer information and online orders. Celerant s flexible catalog/mail order module, also built within the system, allows you offer multiple catalogs simultaneously and track the different codes, along with varying price levels. Our advantage is the flexibility of our Java platform and the tight integration, allowing retailers to manage all channels of their business with one, scalable, realtime system. Our Mission Celerant Technology promotes business growth and efficiency through innovation and technology. We understand the unique challenges and demands retailers face each day. As a result, our in-house programming team has created an advanced retail management system which exceeds these needs. The fact that our software is developed in-house, allows us to specifically focus on each individual retail business. Our extensive, customizable software provides retailers with sophisticated tools to manage every area of their business operation as efficiently as possible. Contact Us Celerant Technology 4830 Arthur Kill Road Staten Island, New York Phone: Phone: Fax: Copyright 2012, Celerant Technology Corp. All rights reserved. This document is provided for information purposes only and the contents hereof are subject to change without notice. This document is not warranted to be error-free, nor subject to any other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document and no contractual obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission.celerant Technology Corporation is a registered ISO/MSP of Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., Walnut Creek CA.