Retail Analytics The perfect business enhancement. Gain profit, control margin abrasion & grow customer loyalty

Transcription

1 Retail Analytics The perfect business enhancement Gain profit, control margin abrasion & grow customer loyalty

2 Retail Analytics are an absolute necessity for modern retailers, it empowers decision makers with accurate data to predict customer buying trends, design effective promotions, and increase gross margins and category performance. As an end result it works in pleasing customers & builds stronger relationships to turn one-time purchasers into long term customers. In today s highly competitive and global landscape, the average consumer has many options, so maintaining and exceeding customer expectations is critical for a company s continued success Retailers and wholesalers are serving customers with disjointed and diverse spending habits. Expectations on shopping floor are soaring requiring transparency across product and relationship value chains. Each process and function inspires a decision that can create an impact on the company s ability to appeal, offer and retain its precious customer base. But it is common for routine decisions not to be supported with the same priority as corporate initiatives. Strategies on whether to consolidate channels or move to emerging markets can consume analytical resources leaving associates to make decisions based on gut feeling. However, questions like Do you need an accurate view of costs, liabilities, risks involved in your business? Still working out your supplier costeffectiveness, and stocks at inventory? Do you find customer buying patterns haphazard and difficult to decipher? Which media should be used to target various customer based at diverse geographies? Still wondering what is the right time to kick off a promotion or a campaign? Where are my areas of operational inefficiency and risk? are equally important in running a business. Experts & associates have made serious attempts to answering these frequently asked questions Associates with the answers having a huge impact on the bottom line. Retail Analytics are needed to provide the data in the hands of your line managers who purchase the products, negotiate the margins, determine time for product launches, manage inventory, create offers and allocate labor. The system is the key to enforcing a culture of fact based decision making among modern day retailers. The main driver behind retailer s focus on intelligent analytics is the ability to quickly react to changes in customer demand. Following the available trends & demands, retailers can use their business intelligence tools to make more accurate business decisions and improve customer retention and loyalty. Based on these top pressures, there is a clear focus among Retailers on improving intelligence and employing analytic tools across the enterprise to react to and better predict customer demand.

3 Functioning with Retail Analytics Retailing environment is a dynamic. Companies need to be flexible and reactive to quickly respond to increasingly sophisticated customer demands. With the development of the Internet and the growth of multi-channel operations, businesses must be able to change their business models so they can collect real-time business information and drive the efficiency of their day-to-day operations. Step 1 Get the Right Data It is rightly said that retailing is detailing, and the crux lies in the detail. The business analytic tool starts here. It allows user to quickly & precisely sift through enormous data to help identifying and predicting selling opportunities. Strength of a Business Analytic tool lies in its usage of cutting edge technology on a clustered environment to provide high performance with an enterprise-ready and proven engine which can store huge amounts of data, scale to the largest enterprise needs, and support high query loads. A retailers approach to retail analytics should be robust and straightforward. Deployment of expert resources (technological, analytical, & business line) can enhance opportunities available and can have a tremendous positive impact on customer portfolio. All areas of concern can be addressed and optimized through disciplined and rigorous execution. Step 2 Gain Deeper Insight and Facilitate Better Decision Making Efficient Analytics tools gather all the enterprise data, irrespective of the format and processes it into meaningful information. Ideally, the Analytical tools should be a set of pre-packaged, shrink wrapped Business Intelligence dashboards which seamlessly plug into the enterprise allowing Analyzing, Visualizing, and Gaining insight into data. Reporting & Analysis tools help information workers access & investigate the data necessary for better decisions. In retail these tools impart a clear understanding to Retailers to recognize the range of customer segments in the marketplace and the diverse customer base across different geographies. Increasingly, retailers are beginning to see the value in tailoring product assortment & marketing to different stores so that customers always have access to the products they want, where and when they want them. Eventually this entire analytic exercise ensures that customers always receive the highest possible service & elimination of traditional challenges such as stock outs or over stocking. In today s competitive market-place, technology plays a vital role in driving efficiency and improving store responsiveness. Not only can retailers collaborate more closely with suppliers through sharing of business information, they can also predict demand and respond to real-time trading fluctuations to improve their stock levels. Step 3 Align Decisions with Corporate Goals Moving up the corporate hierarchy the focus shifts to Key Performance Indications across the entire enterprise. The first two steps helped retailers make decisions as individuals, for larger enterprises the scenarios are many and the enterprise data even larger to handle. Retail Analytics work on a simple promise to improve gross business performance by accelerating the cognitive process of reaching a decision. An elaborate yet precise insight into corporate data strengthens the process of efficient decision making and in turn formulation of policies and business functions that help retailers create competitive advantage and achieve corporate objectives.

4 Most of the data in analytic tools have Dashboards which allow individual users to view information in multidimensional graphical formats, delivering unique visualization tools that permit the easy creation of sophisticated graphical analysis drawn from multiple, live data sources. Decision makers can interpret and capitalize on trends in the four key business areas for retail: Consumer analysis Category Product analysis Supply chain analysis and corporate performance The economics of retailing has fundamentally changed with advancements in business analytics systems. Today, the success of a retailer hinges on knowing the customers and engaging them with timely promotions, product suggestions, and personalized service. Analytics applications can spot financial trends, recognize performance patterns, and give senior management a succinct view of what is happening in the real-world of in-store retailing. Faced with information from every facet of the organization, from warehouse to shelf, retailers can respond quickly to market conditions and remain one step ahead of the competition. Analytical tools slice and dice data to keep pace with the speed of the business help management confidently stride through information overload for organizational decision-making processes. The Result Unlocking the Potential of Your People Individuals have access to high-quality data. Better decisions can be made if the decisions are aligned with corporate goals. Retail Analytics tools are meant for all from a small retailer to a large retail enterprise. Their nature and the people who use them grow as the business grows. Their uage empowers the management to stop guessing and start making faster, smarter decisions. The simplicity of Retail Analytical tools let anyone easily consolidate, search, visualize and analyze all their data for unprecedented business insight. Investment in retail analytics is a small investment for a large return on trust that can help you build your business's success. Retail analytics is no longer an emerging area of technology. Their wide ranging usage and business benefits aim at analyzing every aspect of Retail activity right from sales performance, to marketing effectiveness to customer preferences, to loyalty and shift. Empowering line managers to take faster and effective decisions is one, letting them know the different forms of analysis is another. Cross departmental dashboards and analysis templates are hugely beneficial in gaining the competitive edge by effective decision making. A sample set of department specific analysis are mentioned below. Marketing Analytics Customer segmentation and targeting Campaign management Customer / Channel Affinity Sales Analytics Customer Profitability Analysis Cross Selling and Up selling Market Basket Analysis Product Affinity Inventory & Merchandise Predict accurately what products should be sold together Analyze product performance across a category Shelf Life analytics Understand how pricing impacts sales volumes Identify which products produce the largest returns Which products (by category, feature set, model) generate the most revenue, and profit? Customer service Customer Satisfaction Analysis Customer Loyalty Analysis

5 Annexure Business Intelligence for ivend Retail from CitiXsys utilizes cutting edge technology to offers intuitive dashboards across business functions in ivend Retail and the core accounting Business Management Application. ivend Analytics is a set of prepackaged, shrink wrapped Business Intelligence dashboards which seamlessly plug into ivend Retail. Our retail Intelligence comprises of four integrated solution groups: ivend Analytics for Retail- Retail Customer intelligence helps retailers identify, acquire, activate, serve and retain the most profitable customers. ivend Analytics for Purchase intelligence helps retailers drive revenue, protect margins and earn customer loyalty pricing, promotions, and many more.. Operations intelligence lets retailers leverage organizational assets to trade with vendors and serve customers more efficiently and profitably. ivend Analytics for Sales & Purchase provide the ability to analyze, forecast and maximize profits across the entire retail enterprise by monitoring cost and performance, helping retailers drive disparate functional units toward common goals. ivend Analytics, a CitiXsys product - leverages transactional data of your retail environment to generate context-specific detailed insight which is functional & actionable

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