Successful retailers are constantly seeking ways to optimise processes to support both the stores and the back-end support infrastructure.
Today more than ever it has become apparent that the leading retailers are focusing on how to best use the data they are privy to as well as coming to terms with how to mobilise their enterprise. Retail is a real-time, information-driven enterprise.
Shoppers today are seeking out the best offers, the best prices and the best service levels and they are accomplishing this with real time data and social media. It is imperative now for retailers to be enabled and in doing so they must be working off a foundation of optimal processes.
Every customer interaction and movement of a product through a distribution network is measured and can be used to refine pricing strategies, update inventory location and quantity decisions, and tailor customer incentives on websites, e-mail, mobile devices and catalogues. The days of relying solely on point-of-sale data to determine pricing and manage inventory levels are long gone.
The same goes for relying solely on print media or TV commercials to attract customers. Maintaining long-term, profitable customer relationships in retail requires a constant two-way flow of information between retailers' storefronts (web or physical) and their suppliers and distribution networks.
Big C, a prominent name in Thailand's large retail market, is also the country's top budget retailer. Its parent company is Groupe Casino, which uses SAP Customer Relationship Management to deliver their Drive Solo initiative, allowing their customers to place orders online and pick up goods two hours later from a dedicated express outlet. SAP Customer Relationship Management gives them a 360 degrees view allowing them to understand shopping habits and increasing their service level to almost 100 per cent.
A key challenge in retailing has always been detecting and measuring lost sales. The cash register is the final system of record for all transactions, but what about the missed opportunities? Who was in the store or visiting the website, and what did they look at and not buy? This type of information has been very difficult to track, however innovative technologies such in-memory computing are ideally suited to collecting and analysing unstructured data types like Web logs that show the movements of every customer though an Internet storefront.
Web traffic data can then be combined with existing business intelligence applications and sales data to provide new insights. For example, retailers can compare the volume of website traffic for a given product versus number of sales of that product.
One would expect a correlation between Web traffic and sales - consumers find the product they want, then they buy it. If instead, there is a lot of Web traffic but few sales, something is amiss. It's a signal to the retailer to keep the product (whereas in the past they may have discarded it due to low sales) and confirm the product is competitively priced and has a compelling proposition for the shopper that moves the customer through the path to purchase to make that final, and most important, step: the purchase.
What about physical stores? Is it possible to use the same techniques to better understand shopper behaviour? The answer is becoming "yes." Some of the leading-edge retailers are now using these new technologies to analyse video from their in-store camera systems and create mappings of customer foot traffic throughout the stores.
This big data stream is then combined with sales data to create new applications that help optimise store layout planning, product placement and uncover situations where consumer traffic (interest) doesn't match expected sales and thus signals an issue that needs to be investigated.
Moving forward, imagine a world where retailers can use these new data sources to expand their consumer intelligence base to include analysis of customers' social environments and Web-patterns to become even more relevant and anticipatory of needs and interests.
Claude Ringuet is vice president for Consumer Trade and Industries, SAP Asia Pacific Japan.
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Source: http://www.news.thethailandlinks.com/2012/12/05/the-road-ahead-for-retailers/
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