A Future Without Secrets. A NetPay Whitepaper. more for your money

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1 A Future Without Secrets A NetPay Whitepaper

2 A Future Without Secrets The new business buzz word is Big Data - everyone who is anyone in business is talking about it, but is this terminology just another new phrase that will fall by the way side like BYOD or is it here to stay? Since the internet exploded into life from just a static information repository in the 1990 s to an interactive, sharing based world in the early 2000 s, we have been leaving Hansel and Gretel style online breadcrumbs of our personal preferences ever since. Effectively this is an invisible roadmap of the types of websites, brands and companies that we like, not to mention a whole host of thoughts and opinions posted on social media. Where online has become an ethereal place for data with an abundance of information available, offline data has been left behind, but with new technology such as Beacon being used in traditional bricks and mortar stores the high street shops are becoming more enlightened. "The new business buzz word is Big Data - everyone who is anyone in business is talking about it" One of the biggest challenges facing retailers is what to do with this abundance of data once collected. On its own it is worthless but put together with data collected from loyalty cards, payment cards and our interactions on social media it can build a profile of your customers. It is important for your business and brand that you do not build up siloes of data on your customers, as a 360 degree customer profile would be much more beneficial and allows you to personalise and tailor make offers and services for them. Customer Insight It is every business dream to delight customers first time, every time, which is why understanding their needs, pain points and communication preferences is important for business success. Big data and analytics are now at the top of every business agenda and rightly so, after all, data is the lifeblood of a modern business. Together, data and analytics provide great insight into what your customers like and dislike. It can help determine the direction your business should be going in, but it can often be difficult to utilise it effectively. Businesses have access to an abundance of data both online and offline which is often in different places, and unless you have a team of marketing insight analysts this data will go to waste. Taking the time to analyse this information is the smart way to understanding your customers needs and grow your business. Actionable insight is what people really want, not large amounts of data they struggle to do anything with. They want clear and concise information that allows them to quickly analyse and act upon it. Customer insight is not just about marketing and the best way to advertise and promote to your customers; it provides you with the intelligence and knowledge to develop and improve business strategy based on real fact and figures. The bottom line is that understanding your customers helps you to sell more. The more you know about them and their needs, the easier it is to identify opportunities to sell them new products and target them with appropriate offers.

3 Has the world gone Big Data mad? There is an abundance of data out there in the market from loyalty cards to Facebook likes - data is being collected from us at almost constantly. The rate at which we are generating new data is frightening. According to computer giant IBM, 2.5 Exabyte s - that s 2.5 billion gigabytes (GB) - of data was generated every day in 2012.¹ Social media has played an important part in the Big Data revolution, every interaction we as consumers have within the public domain provides data analysts with insight into our psyche. Social listening has become big business and now all brands are interested in every consumer, regardless of whether they purchase their product or not. Many businesses are only now waking up to the realisation that data is a valuable asset that they need to protect and exploit in order to grow and enhance their business. It seems that sensors are everywhere and this is rapidly changing the way companies operate as they find out more about how we interact with their products and services. This is only going to increase as the technology becomes cheaper to manufacture and data less expensive to store; we could see a whole host of everyday products containing internet connected devices that will track our usage. Proctor and Gamble have already done this with their Oral B Bluetooth enabled toothbrush! ² Customer Centric With consumer willingness to trust retailers with their personal data on the decline, businesses need to find new ways of being able to gather data ethically and with consumer benefit in mind. Research conducted by The Data Agency shows that people trust retailers significantly less with their personal information than they did in 2011 when the first study took place. ³ Understanding your customers purchasing behaviour can provide you with useful insight that will allow you to plan your businesses growth strategy and make your business more productive. It can tell you what your opening hours should be how many employees you need at any given day and even what the best time is to have rest breaks, all of which are incredibly important. It may seem obvious but looking at your business financial data is the key to understanding your cash flow and planning your future growth. For many businesses this means trawling through many statements and spreadsheets to extract and analyse the data that you need, to make informed decisions. NetPay Merchant Services offer alongside their card payment services a management reporting tool called Revolution at no extra cost. Revolution provides merchants with analytics on their online and offline transactions, capturing real-time financial data and analytical reporting. Revolution allows businesses to plan staffing depending on in-store trends, see all stores transactions enabling them to identify best performing regions and sites. Revolution enables merchants to develop their business strategy, providing them with important customer insight that will help influence buyer behaviour and identify potential growth areas. "Many businesses are only now waking up to the realisation that data is a valuable asset" For example; having visibility of all of your stores at the click of a button, you can see what is happening. If there appears to be a sudden downturn in a particular store or area you can drill down to determine the root cause, and then take quick action to resolve the issue. Using payment card data retailers can monitor customer shopping patterns without the requirement for a loyalty card scheme to be in operation

4 Transforming data into something tangible The challenge comes in accessing data and transforming it into something that is usable and actionable. There is a multitude of analytical software that can crunch the numbers, however not every business has the funding to do so even if they would have the benefit of using it. Businesses are already sitting on a goldmine of data that, once exploited, can be used to drive growth and cut costs. Organisations can use customer analytics to build rich customer profiles that can reveal cross- and upsell opportunities that have been overlooked. This customer profile will allow you to understand how often your customers purchase, how they purchase and allow you to push out special offers and product offers based on their transactional history. If you are an online business teaming up your digital analytics with your transactional reporting information will give you insight into how long the customer spent on your site, where they visited and how much they spent. "Businesses are already sitting on a goldmine of data that, once exploited, can be used to drive growth and cut costs" Using transactional reporting merchants can identify new and repeat customers, with the merchants aim to increase repeat customers as they tend to be more brand loyal and return more often. Being able to track customers in this way will also help business owners identify any customer dissatisfaction, because if there is a sudden dip in return from repeat customers it could mean that there is an issue with a particular store and can be addressed quickly. The fine line between data and privacy There has been a lot of talk in the media recently about data privacy and the right to be forgotten following Google receiving over 91,000 take down requests across Europe as of July The big data debate brings up a whole host of issues surrounding data protection. After all, all this data is information about us as consumers and therefore arguably belongs to us although retailers would argue that it is a spending pattern within their business and that information is owned by them. There is yet to be a major legal case where this ownership of this information is really brought into question in a live scenario. People have the right to be told what personal data is being processed about them, the purposes for which it is being processed and who it may be disclosed to. The Price of Privacy Big data is big business and with a forecast of 15bn devices connected to the internet by 2015 and 50bn by 2020 undoubtedly this will mean that the amount of data is expected to grow exponentially and therefore the value of our data is likely to rise too. In this digital society personal data has become a new form of currency, social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are banks, although you might think that their services are free it isn t for we continually deposit our data in the form of likes, location, status updates and photos, effectively data is our currency A report released by The Boston Consulting Group in November 2012 estimates that the total European market for personal data would be worth 1 trillion by

5 Keeping Big Data secure Big data uses large volumes of data that is often held in the cloud. We have seen a recent increase in the number of emerging threats, data breached and leakages of information. It is by no means an epidemic, although the media portrays it as such, but it does highlight the need to ensure that organisations are taking data security seriously. There have been a number of high profile data breaches in the news including; April 2011, 77 million PlayStation Network accounts were hacked exposing names, address and credit card data. This breach cost Sony $171 million. About NetPay NetPay Solutions Group is a multi-channel, payment service provider offering a range of online processing, payment terminal and merchant services through strategic partners. The business operates from offices in both the UK and Ireland. The Group supports a number of partners in a diverse selection of industries including financial services, telecoms, cash and carry wholesale, cost consultancy and trade associations, enabling these organisations to offer card processing and related services to their customers and members. The business has experienced considerable growth by focusing on the challenges businesses experience when using card processing services and seeking to resolve these challenges through a combination of great technology, great service and great value. Summary Researching into Big Data has reminded me of George Orwell s 1984, written over 65 years ago Orwell s technological ideas are now beginning to come alive. Although the uses are not to the extreme as they are in Orwell s world there is a fine line between the dystopia and utopia. It boils down to ownership of data and transparency of what organisations are going to do with it. As a consumer it scares me that all of my data is available at the click of the button and that I have very little control over who has access to it. As a marketer it excites me that I can learn more about what businesses want, what their customers want and how we can develop our services to exceed their expectations and ultimately sell more. One thing is for sure Big Data is only ever going to get bigger! Technology will continue to evolve, lines between data privacy and customer insight will become even more blurred posing a real legal conundrum. Author: Cerri Killworth, Marketing Manager, NetPay Merchant Services NetPay Merchant Services UK T E getintouch@netpay.co.uk W Ireland T E getintouch@netpay.ie W NetPay are the first payment processor in the UK and Ireland to offer green payments and offset the carbon emissions of our payments network.