Everywhere you turn, it seems people are talking about making retail data-driven. Even the most trend- and brand-led businesses have accepted that to prosper in today’s highly competitive environment, they need to leverage data to spot opportunities quicker, and act on them straight away. But while getting retailers to realise the importance of this was a big enough step, there are still many hurdles which they need to overcome.
The first - and the main one as far as I’m concerned - is creating a data-driven culture within the company. While senior executives may have resolved to start using data to make decisions, the people who really need to think like this are at the operational level – the people who actually go and get things done. This is where companies are made or broken, and hiring people who instinctively look to data to make decisions - whether for marketing, merchandising, or even design - is vital.
Finding this talent is extremely hard. I’ve worked with dozens of retailers, and almost all are always on the lookout for more data-driven employees. Whether it’s a new Head of Ecommerce or a new Marketing Executive, identifying someone whose career has been spent working with data - someone who is data-native - is hard and time-consuming, but ultimately very much worth the investment. If an analytical test isn’t part of your interview process, then you’re probably not hiring the right people.
The second hurdle to be cleared, once the culture is in place and the team is composed of the right people, is actually getting at the data. Established retailers have been built on complex, legacy technology, but things have moved on and it’s now possible to get real-time, actionable data in the hands of the entire team with little hassle. Without the right data infrastructure, even the best team will spend most of their time gathering the information, collating the reports and sharing them around. Given how hard it is to build a data-driven team, and how expensive it is for the business, it is extremely inefficient to have them spend the majority of their time on mundane repetitive tasks.
Identifying the right systems, from ecommerce platforms to customer analytics tools, and ensuring that they are able to provide the necessary data in a seamless, automated and real-time way is a significant hurdle to clear. Just like hiring the team, building this infrastructure will take time and money, but that initial investment is well worth making. Researching suppliers, trialling tools, and integrating them – some are basically one click, while others take months to plug in – shouldn’t be avoided or skipped. Once the setup is finished, the feeling you’ll have will be similar to realising that you’ve had your handbrake on the whole time. The whole business will be faster, more agile, better aware and better able to change direction and go towards success.
The final hurdle is the biggest and has a less obvious solution - unlike the previous hurdles. Take the right approach to hiring and to setting up your data technologies, and you’ll overcome them. But the third hurdle - actually acting on the data - requires talent, experience and creativity. Retailers that manage to get to this stage often feel like it’s the end of an epic journey, and they can now relax because their business will run itself. But data on its own is not enough. It won’t make your business better. It will give you great insight into where things are going wrong, or where opportunities are. But to turn that knowledge into success, you need to act, and often team-members are stifled, not given the resources they need or are stuck with the belief that it’s just too hard. Giving them freedom to act and helping them do it – whether that’s adapting marketing channels, promoting different products online or in-store, changing the product range, or altering the communication and messaging that goes out to customers – should be the ultimate priority for retailers if they want to compete, and win, in today’s data-driven world.
By Ivan Mazour, founder and CEO of Ometria
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