How Business Intelligence Leads to Retail Profts
Retail business intelligence is the collection and analysis of key data that retailers can use to impact revenues, profits, and effectiveness. It primarily involves three key components:
- Collecting the right data
- Delivering that data to the right people within your organization
- And using that data to change the retail environment so that you increase revenues, profits, and effectiveness at all levels of the retail organization
What is the Right Retail Data?
So what is the right data to collect?
Business intelligence in retail is about collecting point-of-sale data–customer, product, and financial–as well as competitive, market, and economic data, which can be used for planning purposes.
Collecting the right data, however, is the easy part. What do you do with it once you have it?
Ensuring Data Ends Up in the Right Hands
If your data is going to be used effectively, you’ve got to make sure it ends up in the right hands. That means key product information needs to be accessible to buyers, store managers, regional managers, and operations managers so that each person can use the information for better planning and inventory management.
By the same token, marketers and store managers need access to key customer information to ensure better customer service is performed.
Each level of your retail business needs key data in order to be effective and increase revenues. A good operations solution will make this seamless.
Analyzing the Data
The hardest part about business intelligence is analyzing the data you collect. Not everyone is equipped to analyze the data effectively. How do the numbers affect your profits? Can you change anything to cut expenses and increase revenues? If so, what needs to change?
When you engage your associates in planning based on solid business intelligence, and train them to use the proper tools, you’ll be a more effective retailer. And you’ll be more profitable too.