Retail Moves Fast. Delayed and Ineffective Decisions Cost Money. The Right Specialised Vendor, such as datasapiens, Can Help.
Misaligned data from disjointed systems delay decision-making.
The speed of retail means that thousands of decisions are made across the business daily. Critical decisions to drive growth, from buying and assortment to price and promotions to loyalty and customer management, often depend on misaligned data from disjointed systems. Compounding the matter is that these systems are often not user-friendly.
The result is that much time is wasted extracting, manipulating, aligning and eventually analysing data to understand what is happening. Once a data set is “complete”, the analysis can begin; however, the decision-making will likely only get so far as the data is limited and probably aggregated. The result is more questions than answers, followed by further data requests, investigation, delayed decision-making, and action.
An excellent article by Geoffroy de Varis explains in detail the waste in the analytical process driven by latency, from data availability and analytics to decision and action. Compressing the analytical process adds significant value owing to accelerated decision-making and speed to action.
McKinsey & Co. estimates that 500,000 days were wasted by US companies owing to ineffective decisions, equivalent to $250 million in wages, while the annual cost of poor and inadequate decisions cost US companies around $270 billion or 3% of profits in 2020.
Invest in efficiency
A-class retailers have fast retail insights platforms. They make decisions quickly and eliminate waste and inefficiencies, resulting in a competitive advantage.
Investment delivers. Best-in-class retailers have outperformed competitors by 68% in terms of returns, according to McKinsey & Co., owing to investments in advanced analytics, price and promotion, and customer-centricity.
Retailers are investing in technology. According to Gartner, retailers globally spent $218 billion on technology or about 1.5% of sales. Investments were typically to unify operations and deliver the best service, fewer lost sales, and greater overall efficiency.
These benefits are neither exclusive nor elusive. You can level the playing field with global players at a fraction of the cost.
Step change insights in a matter of weeks
Imagine a world where everyone accesses comprehensive insights to make meaningful decisions. Fast. That world can be a reality in as little as six weeks.
Our clients benefit from the following:
Time to value: 6 weeks
User satisfaction: c.90%
Self-funded growth: >100% ROI
To illustrate these benefits further, we may consider the following case studies.
Case Study: User Engagement
Many vendors invoke the features and capabilities of their solutions. However, this cannot be meaningful unless the targeted users engage with the solution. Excellent capabilities mean nothing if they are not used. A user-friendly, intuitive interface, with relevant insights tailored to the business and role requirements, is critical for adoption. Our clients and users are highly engaged, as can be seen below.
User satisfaction: 85.9%
User preference for datasapiens vs. the competition +32.2%
Commercial usage: 80.3%, +7% year on year
Store manager usage: 98%, at least three times per week
Case Study: Business Impact
When users are engaged, the action can happen! Quality decisions based on quality insights lead to effective actions and growth. Decision-making is multi-faceted and decentralised to the point of accountability. Users cover all essential functions, from buying and marketing to stores and the board, with aligned insights and objectives. Buyers can manage the margin mix through supplier partnerships and joint business planning while stores sell in alignment. Similarly, member recruitment, cross-selling, promotions, and more are aligned between marketing and stores. Suppliers subscribe and collaborate with buyers on shared objectives. This leads to growth:
L4L sales +11.5%
Sales share of priority suppliers: +10%
Cross-sell rate: +16%
Target department share: +1.5%
Margin growth: 0.3 pp
Client user engagement and business Impact have been driven by a solution that delivers unique, differentiated capabilities:
Complete data: Sales, inventory, margin, back margin, customer, staff, budget and P&L, all in one solution.
Actionable insights when you want them: An array of insights for every need, tailored to requirement. As advocates of the sushi principle, all data is 100% disaggregated, allowing real-time iteration and analysis of all data.
Collaboration: Democratisation of insights at scale, grounded in a single source of truth, enables thousands of users, internally and externally, to collaborate effectively to drive the business forward.
Conclusion
Disparate data sources and disjointed systems delay insights, decision-making, and corresponding action. This costs millions of dollars in lost profit each year and a loss of competitive advantage. It doesn’t have to be this way. Vendors such as datasapiens drive growth and efficiency by enabling retailers to make effective, customer-centric decisions and take action. Fast. These solutions are no longer restricted to global players; they are available to all retailers.
