Read this white paper by Don Tapscott and explore the criteria best-in-class retailers use for selecting business intelligence solutions. Companies that effectively harness the vast quantities of information that IT systems generate - both within the corporation and outside its walls - are poised to gain competitive advantage.
BusinessIntelligence
fortheRetailIndustry:
ActionableInsightsforBusinessDecisionMakers
byDonTapscott Business Intelligence for the Retail Industry: 1 Actionable Insights for Business Decision Makers
Executive Summary power and by extension on retailers' bottom-lines. In addition, disruptive new technologies are coming online THE RETAIL SECTOR was one of the first sectors to make that may inevitably commoditize retail sales even further. significant investments in collecting and integrating For example, today in Japan, having your smart phone customer data in data warehouses. Retailers have take a picture of a UPC code on a product in one store generally earned a significant return on their IT system may offer you a more competitive price in another. investments by using business intelligence systems to analyze the data to improve business performance with a The historical comfort of 100%+ markups and focus on reducing operating costs, without sacrificing the traditional assurances of profitability for this industry have customer experience. The levers that a retailer can use to long passed. In these maturing markets it is not enough for optimize performance include: price, promotion, retailers to understand what customers want; they must markdown, assortment, space, allocation and anticipate customers' future needs in order to get in front replenishment. Data-driven decision making is key to of competitors with innovative, market-leading product successful decisions regarding all of these levers. assortments. Today, business intelligence is no longer limited to the traditional, narrow definition of "delivering In the future, firms will need to continue to be cost reports to users." BI now encompasses the use of data to effective but increasingly will need to focus on using data derive insight and achieve competitive advantage by not to drive revenue by better understanding their customers' only answering the question "what did customers want?" needs. Increasingly, this understanding will come from but by increasingly answering the questions "what do supplementing internally collected data with the vast customers want now?" and "what will they want in the quantities of external data generated (or made accessible) future?" by the Internet. Organizations need a new generation of business intelligence (BI) tools and applications to The potential to do so now increasingly depends on the integrate this cross-enterprise, inter-enterprise and external effective use of business intelligence systems to utilize data in order to achieve insight and transparency, across available data to help create value for customers. As it has all channels. Enterprises that effectively harness the vast for the last 30 years, a portion of the data will come from quantities of information that IT systems generate?both inside the firm in the form of customer databases that hold within the corporation and outside its walls?are poised to information culled from point of sale terminals, online gain competitive advantage. activity, loyalty cards, credit and debit cards and other customer activity. Different geographic markets have different levels of sophistication in the use of this customer data but it is clear that these systems are going to 1.0 Value Proposition be a baseline requirement in all global markets in the Competition in the retail sector is becoming increasingly future. Increasingly, however, data will also come from fierce as the complexities of global expansion, rapid outside the firm in exceptionally diverse forms that will product cycles, currency fluctuation and changing have value in the future. For instance, retailers in Florida customer preferences continue to transform many may want to track weather patterns off the coast of Africa segments. In 2006, convenience store sales were up 15% in the autumn as they will potentially be predictive of 1in the U.S. yet profits were down 23.5%. The average hurricane activity several days later. A lead time of several 2supermarket makes less than 1% net on sales. Price days may provide for the stocking of products such as pressure from Wal-Mart and other "big box" retailers, and bottled water and generators that customers demand in the eBay's micro-retailers, be they from Chicago or event of a hurricane actually happening. Zhangzhou, have squeezed prices to where many survive Historically, inventories could be built t... [download for more]
