Retailers are constantly trying to improve customer intelligence and remove wasteful spending. The IBM white paper, "A Best-in-Class Roadmap For Performance Improvement," includes the results of an Aberdeen survey of over 200 retail companies. In it, you'll see the critical Business Intelligence strategies and capabilities that best-in-class retailers are employing to increase performance.
Business Intelligence in Retail:
A Best-in-Class Roadmap for Performance Improvement
January 2008 Business Intelligence in Retail Page 2
Executive Summary
Retailers are increasingly focusing on how they can improve customer Research Benchmark intelligence and remove wasteful spending. A survey of Aberdeen's retail Aberdeen's Research community revealed that Business Intelligence (BI) is the top technology that Benchmarks provide an in-retailers will be focusing on in 2008. Aberdeen surveyed over 200 retail depth and comprehensive look companies during December 2007 to determine the critical BI strategies, into process, procedure, capabilities, and technology enablers that Best-in-Class companies are methodologies, and employing to improve performance. This report provides retailers with an technologies with best practice actionable roadmap for understanding successful BI implementation and identification and actionable deployment methods. recommendations
Best-in-Class Performance Aberdeen selected three key performance criteria to distinguish Best-in-Class companies from Industry Average and Laggards. Based on these indicators, Best-in-Class companies showed the following performance: . An average year-over-year same store sales increase of 11.7% . 92% have increased their profit margin, with an average increase of 9.3% . Increased their customer retention by an average of 12.2%
Competitive Maturity Assessment Survey results show that the firms enjoying Best-in-Class performance shared several common characteristics. . Best-in-Class companies are twice as likely as all others to have implemented data cleansing tools . 33% more Best-in-Class companies provide their employees with business intelligence training than Laggards . Best-in-Class retail companies are 80% more likely to focus on the lifetime value of customers than all others
Required Actions In addition to the specific recommendations in Chapter Three of this "We decided to implement report, to achieve Best-in-Class performance, companies must: new business intelligence solutions to improve efficiency. . Improve the value offering to customers for increased customer With all of the data in one retention and loyalty. centralized location there will be only one version of the . Work to create an organizational culture around utilizing business truth." intelligence data and analysis. ~ Kristen Blum, . Automate report generation, updates, and analysis to improve efficiency. CIO/SVP, Abercrombie & Fitch
Table of Contents Executive Summary....................................................................................................... 2 Best-in-Class Performance.....................................................................................2 Competitive Maturity Assessment.......................................................................2 Required Actions...................................................................................................... 2 Chapter One: Benchmarking the Best-in-Class .....................................................4 Improved Intelligence Breeds Better Business..................................................4 The Maturity Class Framework............................................................................6 The Best-in-Class PACE Model and Strategy....................................................7 Chapter Two: Benchmarking Requirements for Success..................................10 Competitive Assessment......................................................................................10 Capabilities and Enablers......................................................................................12 Chapter Three: Required Actions .........................................................................17 Laggard Steps to Success......................................................................................17 Industry Average Steps to Success ....................................................................17 Best-in-Class Steps to Success............................................................................18 Appendix A: Research Methodology................................................ [download for more]
