5 Missing Factors Affecting Retail Analytics
One way to decide which factors are necessary in retail analytics software is to look at what could happen if that factor were missing. Here are some scenarios that successful retailers refuse to experience:
- Lack of Business Intelligence — when there is no way to collect, integrate, or present key business information, there is no way to analyze data or make better business decisions. What happens when there are no historical, current, and comparative views of financial and operational data? The decisions may as well be made by flipping a coin.
- No Real-Time Status Information — retailers who only have access to reports from previous quarters make decisions about operations and product management in the dark. How can appropriate decisions be made without knowing what is happening in real time?
- Insufficient Performance Indicators — measuring performance is impossible without meaningful terms. Key indicators should utilize retail metrics and common processes so performance is accurately assessed and controlled. Guesswork has no place in today’s retail management analysis.
- Inadequate Report Writing — business relies on reports for concise updates on what is happening in operations. Without the right information when it is needed, presented in comprehensive and effective communication form, decision-makers are poorly equipped to do their job.
- Poor Data Views — presenting data in a form that doesn’t make sense to the viewer is almost worse than not presenting it at all. Key information has to be accessible to the one who needs it, in the form that person can utilize. This means a dashboard, graphs, pivots, drillable lists, or whatever the user defines. It also means critical information can be onscreen or printed for those who prefer paper.
Retail analytics is too important to ignore. It’s also too important to be done without the right tools. Since ChainDrive Retail Analytics Software can address each of these factors, there isn’t a good excuse to do the job without it. Intelligent analysis is the way that good business decisions are made.