BI trends: What to expect in retail in 2019?

To help retailers and brands plan for 2019, Researcher Claudia Tajima and Fiona Swerdlow are interviewing experts within Forrester for their series, ´Applying 2019 Predictions To Retail´. This week, Claudia interviewed Jennifer Belissent, Ph.D. and principal analyst on Forrester’s consumer insights team, on their 2019 BI predictions report. Here’s what Jennifer thinks retailers and brands can expect and should focus on regarding BI for the rest of 2019.

Claudia:Your first BI prediction for 2019 states that companies cannot be successful simply selling raw data and that self-service data marketplaces will struggle. BI tools need to start delivering data insights and services. How does this shift affect retailers?

Jennifer: For retailers today, there is a vast amount of data that you could use to improve business and better understand your customers. Many retailers already use their data to understand their customers and forecast trends. But today is a rapidly evolving landscape of new, alternative data sources. Opportunities to enrich data with new sources are appealing. However, retailers must evaluate those opportunities carefully. Why? The time to value is longer when buying raw data instead of buying data insights. For example, buying a customer’s credit score would be faster time to value than buying the raw customer data to ultimately find their credit score. My recommendation is that retailers should not rush to buy data or expect to be able to buy data from a marketplace and get all the answers they’re searching for. In some cases, retailers need insights service providers to interpret this data.

Claudia:How will the demand for data storytelling skills impact retailers’ talent acquisition strategies?

Jennifer: This demand exists because there is a gap between technology users and data scientists. They don’t always speak the same language, but a storyteller can bridge the gap. Organizations need a storyteller who can talk to the business team, data team, and the technology team and help them reach a common understanding. This balance is critical for BI teams to be able to both organize data and deliver the data in a compelling way. Forrester’s research suggests that more mature companies, those that are more ´insights-driven´, have these skills.

Claudia:Organizations are predicted to abandon unactionable BI reporting and dashboards. How should retailers respond to growing derelict dashboard graveyards?

Jennifer: Retailers are seeking answers to questions such as: How does one store compare to others? How does it compare to regional sales? However, retailer leaders’ interest in specific reports or dashboards eventually goes down over time. Creating a data center of excellence increases more data awareness, but it also brings about a frenzy of requests for new dashboards and reports. Ultimately, many of these requests end up as orphaned dashboards. It is important for retailers to be careful of how they embrace data democratization. Take time to step back and rationalize, prioritize, and determine which data from reports and dashboards you need and don’t need.

Claudia:Why should retailers consider adopting data fabrics in place of data lakes?

Jennifer: In the past, many organizations chose to put their data into massive data lakes. However, these organizations did not fully think through how their data lakes should be organized and used. Today, organizations are starting to realize that there is no major benefit to putting all of their data into one centralized data lake. The new trend is to create a data fabric of woven data from across different parts of the organization that sits somewhere central. Data fabric stores maintain their own individual data, but there is a central data point where it can all be accessed.

Claudia:What recommendations would you give to retail leaders looking into investing in BI tools in the coming 12 to 18 months?

Jennifer: Data catalogues, which serve as a knowledge repository, are becoming very popular. Organizations typically have one centralized data catalogue. Interesting data catalogue outputs include: use cases, algorithms, as well as which reports the data has been used for and where has it been tested in sales. In terms of ambient data governance tools, retailers should look for BI tools that have data governance built directly into them.

Author: Fiona Swerdlow

Source: Forrester

How BI helps shaping the future of retail

The author of this article, Microstrategy's Nick Barth, joined DynamicAction and LEGO Group onstage at FT Future of Retail 2019 to discuss how to maximize the power of data-driven customer insights.

The event discussion offered three main takeaways for retail enterprises looking to expand and optimize their data.

Be smarter about how we look at data

It's time to wean ourselves off of Excel. When all your data is in a spreadsheet, it's hard to find value within the rows and columns. There are much better ways of visualizing data today, and modern visualization tools benefit everyone in the enterprise with intelligence, not just the data-adept.

Data lakes aren't the answer

While a unified warehouse is challenging to achieve, data lakes haven't proven themselves to be better. Business users and analysts alike are referring to them as 'data swamps'. So how can enterprises turn disparate data from multiple sources, and at different levels of usability, into something that elevates the enterprise?

The answer is an enterprise semantic layer: software that filters data from different sources and provides the governance necessary for a single version of the truth across the organization. When all users, from store managers to executives, are looking at the same numbers, you’re on your way to success as a retailer of the future.

Keep a pulse on your business

Retail business leaders need to be in the know about vital KPIs such as store performance and customer experience, and they need this data to be in real time, accurate, and easily accessible. Self-service BI makes this possible, but those looking to the future should take advantage of new technologies to not only make data accessible, but to integrate it into the natural workflow of every employee.

So what concrete benefits will these important tips deliver to your retail enterprise? Here are three of many:

• Competitive pricing: Flag pricingdiscrepancies and deliver the best possible value to your customers.
• Real-time store performance monitoring: Mobile dashboards can deliver important store and customer KPIs to every employee on the floor, helping them boost the customer experience and drive sales.
• Inventory management: Never experience a stockout again by arming your store ops and supply chain managers with the accurate inventory data they need to take collective action.

The discussion at FT Future of Retail made it clear that the retail industry needs to embrace data and analytics to keep up with both competitors and consumer demands.

Author: Nick Barth

Source: MicroStrategy

Migros: an example of seizing the opportunities BI offers

Migros is the largest retailer in Turkey, with more than 2500 outlets selling fresh produce and groceries to millions of people. To maintain high-quality operations, the company depends on fresh, accurate data. And to ensure high data quality, Migros depends on Talend.

The sheer volume of data managed by Migros is astonishing. The company’s data warehouse currently holds more than 200 terabytes, and Migros is running more than 7,000 ETL (extract, transform, load) jobs every day. Recently, the quality of that data became the focal point for the BI (business intelligence) team at Migros.

“We have 4,000 BI users in this company,” said Ahmet Gozmen, Senior Manager of IT Data Quality and Governance at Migros. “We produce 5-6 million mobile reports every year that our BI analysts see on their personal dashboards. If they can’t trust the timeliness or the accuracy of the reports, they can’t provide trustworthy guidance on key business decisions.”

In 2019, Mr. Gozmen and his team decided they needed a more reliable foundation on which to build data quality. “We were having a few issues with our data at that time,” he said. “There would be occasional problematic or unexpected values in reports—a store’s stock would indicate an abnormal level, for example—and the issue was in the data, not the inventory. We had to address these problems, and more than that we wanted to take our data analysis and BI capabilities to a higher level.''

From Community to Commercial

Initially, Mr. Gozmen’s team used the non-commercial version of Talend Data Quality. “It was an open-source solution that we could download and set up in one day,” he said. “At first, we just wanted to see whether we could do something with this tool or not. We explored its capabilities, and we asked the Talend Community if we had questions or needed advice.”

Mr. Gozmen discovered that Talend had far more potential than he expected. “We found that the data quality tool was very powerful, and we started exploring what else we could do with Talend,” he said. “So we also downloaded the data integration package, then the big data package. Talend could handle the huge volumes of data we were dealing with. And very soon we started thinking about the licensed, commercial versions of these solutions, because we saw a great deal of potential not only for immediate needs but for future plans.”

By upgrading to the commercial versions, Migros also elevated the level of service and support that was available. “The Community served our purposes well in the early stages,” said Mr. Gozmen, “but with the commercial license we now have more personalized support and access to specialists who can help us immediately with any aspect of our implementation.”

From Better Data Quality to Big Data Dreams

With Talend Data Quality, Migros has improved the accuracy and reliability of its BI reporting, according to Mr. Gozmen. “We are a small department in a very big company,” he said, “but with help from Talend we can instill confidence in our reporting, and we can start to support other departments and have a larger impact on improving processes and even help generate more income.”

The higher level of data quality Migros has achieved with Talend has also led Mr. Gozmen to consider using Talend for future data initiatives. “We have big dreams, and we are testing the waters on several fronts,” he said. “We are exploring the possibilities for predictive analytics, and we feel Talend’s big data capabilities are a good match.”

The Migros team is also considering using Talend in moving from its current batch processing mode to real-time data analysis, according to Mr. Gozmen. “We are currently using date-minus-one or date-minus two batch processing, but we want to move to real-time big data predictive analytics and other advanced capabilities as soon as possible,” he said. “We are currently testing new models that can help us achieve these goals.”

While the business advantages of using Talend are manifesting themselves in past, present, and future use cases, Mr. Gozmen sums them up this way: “With Talend we can trust our data, so business leaders can trust our reports, so we can start to use big data in new ways to improve processes, supply chain performance, and business results.”

Author: Laura Ventura

Source: Talend

Storefronts and stalls have been around since forever, and even now, one just has to walk around an old city centre to see stores that are hundreds of years old. Take Fortnum and Mason in London for example, founded in 1707 and still trading in the same building. Retail has not fundamentally changed much over the millennia.

However, since the emergence of the internet since the mid 90’s and the introduction of e-commerce stores such as Amazon and eBay, the retail industry has undergone its biggest overhaul yet. The physical world of try before you buy is rapidly decreasing, while the virtual world of buy, deliver and then send it back if you don’t like it is growing.

Amazon has recently posted an impressive annual revenue of $232.9 billion. Likewise, the average growth of sales of e-commerce was 24.5% annually since 2014.

According to the analysis of 500 high streets by accountancy specialists, 2,692 stores were shut between January and June. Just 1,569 started up – an all-time low, because of plunging confidence. Retailers are focusing more and more on online shopping.

Gone are the days where buses, trains and cars shipped shoppers to the highstreets and out of town shopping centres. Nowadays all kinds of delivery vehicles bring the products of the shops to us.

Useful data to retailers

As retail businesses are closing down their storefronts on the high street, they are focusing more and more on online sales. With this change, an influx of useful data to retailers emerges that must be stored and made good use of.

This flood of data to retailers presents them with a huge amount of power and opportunity to know who their customers are and likewise to gather data about them in order to inform future business decisions, but it also presents a big challenge. Whichever retail business falls behind in managing data will be beaten by its competition relentlessly.

When customers make an online order, they must fill out all kinds personal details like the delivery address. With this data, company’s can map where the majority of their customers are ordering from and optimize marketing campaigns accordingly based on location.

Perhaps a business notices that a lot of its sales are in inner city areas, they may choose to double down their marketing efforts in these areas or look for other cities in which their products may be suitable.

Likewise, knowing where your customers are based may help to optimize delivery routes so that customers get their products as quickly and efficiently as possible. It is important to be aware that these benefits are to no avail if customer data is incorrect or there are large amounts of duplicates in retailers CRM systems. Data sets that are either obtained incorrectly or managed the wrong way will lead to misinformed decisions, resulting into inefficient business processes and ultimately losses for the business. It is essential that with this uprooting of the retail industry, retailers start taking data management seriously.

Whilst there is a large opportunity for retailers who take their data management seriously, there is also a major risk if customer data is not managed correctly. The sanctions on companies who mismanage their customer data can be substantial. Likewise, in an increasingly competitive market, missing out on the benefits of effective data management may be the angel of death for retailers around the globe. In the modern society of online shopping, data management can make or break the success of a retail business.

Change is inevitable, however, it is businesses resilience and the ability to adapt to change that determines the ability not only to survive but to prosper.

Author: Martin Doyle

Source: DQ Global

ExtinctHere's what you didn't learn in school about the disruption affecting retail today. A recent article by consultant Chris H. Petersen, "Seven disruptive trends that will kill the 'dinosaurs of retail'" discussed the fate of "25 retail dinosaurs that vanished in the last 25 years" which was the subject of an Entrepreneur article. Those retailers included giants such as Circuit City, Comp USA, Blockbuster, Borders, and Tower Records, companies which literally dominated their category or channel. Others named in the article were retail innovators in their own right until new disruptors outgunned them. The point is that neither longevity, size, or specialization guarantee retail survival today. So how can today's retailers avoid being extinguished by current disruptive innovations?

Disruptive innovation refers to any enhanced or completely new technology that replaces and disrupts an existing technology, rendering it obsolete. (Picture how we went from the Model T to the KIA; from giant mainframes to personal computers; or from fixed-line telephones to cellphones/smartphones).

Disruptive innovation is described by Harvard Business professor Clayton Christensen as a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves up market, eventually displacing established competitors.

Today's major disruptive retail trends have led to the rise of the consumer, the rise of technology to help retailers best serve the consumer while wrestling with competitive forces, and the demise of "the old way of doing business."

I. The Consumer.

Evolving, innovative, disruptive technology has led to consumer-dominated behavior that reaches across many channels. As we know, today's consumer now shops any time and everywhere using a variety of helping tools.

The consumer is capable of having a personal, seamless experience across their entire shopping journey to explore, evaluate and purchase, tempered by how retailers DO business, provide service, deal with their competition, etc.

* The consumer journey starts online, although stores remain a destination for experience.

What can retailers do? The successful retailer of the future needs to not only master online and offline, but how to connect with the consumer across many touch points, especially social media.

* Mobile juggernaut. The latest stats show that there are now more cell phones in use than people on this planet. Smartphones now exceed 4.5 billion. Mobile is the majority and will be the preferred screen for shopping.

What can retailers do? Retail survivors must optimize for mobile engagement, and also broadcast offers and connect with consumers wherever they are. The store of the future will not only have beacons to connect, but to track traffic via mobile as well.

* Stock availability / Virtual aisle / Endless shelf. More than 50 percent of consumers expect to shop online and see if stock is available in store.

Omni channel consumers now fully realize that stores can't begin to stock every model, style and color. While consumers can see hundreds if not thousands of products in store, they know that there are millions online.

What can retailers do? The survivors are literally creating a seamless experience between online, store and mobile apps so the consumer can "have it their way" anywhere, anytime.

* Consumer experience still rules. Consumer experience still needs to come down to senses: Tactile, visual, and psychological.

What can retailers do? Virtual dressing rooms, better in-store experiences, and adoption of new disruptive technology to address and satisfy these issues.

* Personalization of products and services.

What can retailers do? New survivors are emerging with "mass personalization" opportunities to custom tailor your clothes or curate your personal wardrobe assortment and send it to you.

* Social Connections and the influence of the opinions of others. Social has become a primary source of research and validation on what to buy. Today's consumers are 14 times more likely to believe the advice of a friend than an ad.

What can retailers do? Today's major brands are giving much more attention to and spending more dollars on social media than traditional media.

II. Technology

Disruptors share the common purpose to create businesses, products and services that are better -- usually less expensive and always more creative, useful, impactful -- and scalable.

What can retailers do? Put into use as soon as possible disruptive technology solutions such as price and assortment intelligence, behavioral economics, customer experience analytics, predictive analytics, and more to help understand, meet, and outgun the competition and service the customer.

A Note on Predictive Analytics.

Dr. Christensen subscribes to predictive analytics as, "the ability to look at data from the past in order to succeed in new ways the future." Predictive analytics solutions, the capability to forecast consumer purchase trends in order to sell the most products at the best prices at any given time are coming on strong.

Bottom Line For Your Bottom Line

There's never been a time of more disruptive change in retail. Retailers who are the most adaptable to change -- and not the strongest nor more intelligent of the species -- will be the ones to survive.

It's a case of keeping yourself on top of the tsunami of change through the mastery of today's and tomorrow's new disruptive technologies.

*Thanks to Chris H. Petersen, PhD, CEO of Integrated Marketing Solutions, a strategic consultant who specializes in retail, leadership, marketing, and measurement.

Source: upstreamcommerce.com, February 8, 2015

Why data management is key to retailers in times of the pandemic

Jamie Kiser, COO and CCO at Talend, explains why retailers, striving to ensure they’re not missing out on future opportunities, must leverage one thing: data. By utilizing customer intelligence and better data management, retailers can collect supply chain data in real-time, make better orders to suppliers based on customer intelligence.

While major industries from tech to the public sector felt COVID’s pain points, not many felt them as acutely as retail. Retailers must now contend with everything from unreliable supply chains to a limit on the number of customers in-store at any given time, as consumer behavior shifted with social distancing guidelines and new needs.

For example, e-commerce grew by 44% in 2020. As we begin recovering from the pandemic, retailers increasingly push to deliver their customers an in-store shopping experience as seamless as it is online. However, these new digital strategies rely on precise inventory management, which remains a pain point for many brick-and-mortar stores.

For retailers to ensure they’re not missing out on future opportunities, they need to leverage one thing: data. By utilizing customer intelligence and better data management, retailers can collect supply chain data in real-time, make better orders to suppliers based on customer intelligence. Data will help retailers fully integrate their supply chain, customer, and in-store data to ensure they’re creating an in-store experience that’s competitive to shopping online and other new shopping behaviors.

Eyes on the supply (chain)

The pandemic has revealed the fragility of the supply chain. With unprecedented unpredictability in what products stores will and will not have access to and when retailers need to integrate real-time data management into their online operations. Investing in supply chain data strategies enables retailers to adapt and adjust to sudden breakdowns from their suppliers.

Like Wayfair and Dick’s Sporting Goods, some companies leverage real-time inventory data to make their supply chain transparent to their customers, so they are always up to date on what is and isn’t on the shelves. Investing in data management tools to collect supply chain data in real-time empowers retailers to create better customer experiences and saves stores the estimated billions in lost sales to customers discovering their desired item is out of stock.

However, supply chain erosion is not the only supply problem retailers will have to overcome. Some issues facing supply and inventory come from consumers, like last March’s run on toilet paper or the PS5 selling out before they even made it to shelves. Seemingly instantaneous changes in customer behavior can instantly impact what items retailers are prioritizing in orders from suppliers. But without understanding customer behavior, retailers can overcorrect and wind up with dead inventory on their hands.

Customer analytics influence orders

To avoid collecting dead inventory and ensure orders to suppliers are accurate to their customers’ desires, retailers need to integrate customer intelligence with their supply chain information systems. Combining this information empowers retailers to place orders from suppliers based on precise predictive models of customer behavior. This way, retailers will keep up with rapid consumer behavior changes and keep supply chains up to speed with the latest trends in brick and mortar shopping.

For example, buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) shopping experiences have been a growing trend among retailers and consumers the past few years, and this trend shows no sign of slowing down. One survey found BOPIS sales grew by 208% in 2020. But BOPIS is not the only trend growing during the pandemic. It has also accelerated research online, purchase offline (ROPO). Finding success in both BOPIS and ROPO is entirely contingent on understanding what’s on the shelf, what suppliers bring in, and which items are unpopular and creating dead inventory. By collecting specific customer intelligence, such as the products customers are researching, retailers can build predictive models for when online research turns into an in-store sale.

Leveraging customer intelligence not only helps brick and mortar retailers keep shelves stocked with the products their customers wish to purchase but can also be integrated with supply chain data to optimize operations. Investment in data management and integration can positively impact retailers’ profits by allowing them to make purchasing decisions from suppliers based on supplier circumstances and customer demand. Pooling data from both suppliers and customers into a single source of truth gives retailers the ability to operate under intelligent predictive business models. It also will prevent direct profit loss to competitors. Research shows an estimated $36.3 billion is lost to brick-and-mortar competition annually to customers purchasing elsewhere upon discovering their desired item is out of stock.

An integrated approach to supply chain management

Integrating real-time supply chain data with customer intelligence can prevent customer walkouts and increase profits by mitigating the risks to the supply chain created by the pandemic. However, when this external data combines with internal data — like sales, restocking times, demand surges, and more – brick and mortar retailers can position their supply chain to be in sync with the real-time shopping occurring online and in-store. Better business intelligence and supply chain data management empower retailers to offer customers a competitive experience to find online. Doing this requires a robust data management system and a business-wide data strategy that integrates data across all verticals.

For example, European clothing retailer Tape à l’oeil, replaced an aging ERP system with a new SAP and Snowflake-based infrastructure to better capture digital traffic data as they made operations digital due to the pandemic. This addition to their existing platform allows Tape à l’oeil to capture customer feedback through surveys to capture satisfaction with a new collection. Now digital campaign results are easily retrieved from Facebook and Instagram to cross-reference them in Snowflake and share comprehensive reports with management. Making data the heart of their business strategy.

This new data strategy has allowed Tape à l’oeil to find success during these tumultuous times by integrating customer data into predictive models to help them act faster and mitigate risks in their supply chain. Tape à l’oei’s CIO said that leveraging data has allowed them to improve operations overall and give them the “agility” to react to disruptions in the supply chain swiftly.

The brick and mortar way forward

A year into the pandemic and the retail industry remains in an ever precarious state. However, consumer trends show there are still growth opportunities for the brick-and-mortar stores prepared to meet customer demand.

Making data management an integral part of retail operations will help companies meet the supply chain challenges presented by COVID-19 and empower them to keep their business growing.

Author: Jamie Kiser

Source: Talend