How to Become an Omni-Channel Data-Driven Retailer

In today’s digital age where customers are as likely to buy a product from an eCommerce website as from a brick and mortar store, delivering a seamless and value-adding shopping experience has become more important than ever before. The multiple shopping channels available to customers and the competition posed by other retailers have made it an absolute necessity for a retail Business to integrate data inputs from different channels and use to it define an omni-channel shopping experience. 

As a Big Data and BI influencer, I have worked with a large number of businesses within and beyond the retail industry. Using this knowledge and expertise, I have developed a 5-step approach that businesses operating in the retail sector can adopt to meet the expectations of their customers and become an omni-channel, data-driven retailer. 

In their journey to becoming a data-driven organization, businesses are required to collect the right type of data — data that can help them improve the customer experience and maximize the profit they gain from their online and offline channels. 

For example, a business that operates brick and mortar stores would probably like to try different layouts and floor plans to determine which maximizes the chances of a sale. To do this, they will require sales breakdown for each store. On the other hand, since in online context you can personalize customer journeys, a business with an eCommerce website will be required to collect data about their purchasing history, browsing behaviors, and more.

Apart from customer data, competitor data is another type of data that you need to collect. Collect data regarding price, customer reviews and ratings, and sizing and use the intelligence gain to optimize your product catalogue and customer journey.

Gathering data without analyzing is not only a waste of time, it will also raise doubt and suspicion among your customers. Therefore, it is also important not to collect data that you are not going to use.

Once you have determined the type of data you want to collect, the next step is to identify the channels that can provide you the data. Retail businesses collect massive amounts of information from a wide range of channels. In fact, each successful transaction presents a data collection responsibility to retail businesses. However, the sheer amount of data and the disparate sources from which they are collected may make it quite an impossible task for businesses to organize the data and generate valuable insights from it. 

Since a large amount of data collected by a retailer is processed through its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, the platform can be used for the purpose of data organization. Alternatively, there are a number of other BI platforms available that businesses can use to improve their data collection, organization, visualization, and analytical capabilities. These platforms can collect data from a large number of sources, including:

In our next webinar Ian Macdonald, Principal Technologist at Pyramid Analytics will show how a BI platform can help you amalgamate data and get a unified and accurate view of all your customer, competitor, and corporate data.