Retail Analytics

Why it is important for retail inventory optimization and more

The competition in retail is increasing by the day. No matter which industry you’re in or what products you’re offering, the key to achieving retail success is to become more data-centric. Be it marketing, retail stock management or retail inventory optimization. That’s where retail analytics comes in.

Relying on concrete data enables retailers to make smarter business decisions and improve customer satisfaction, fueling the overall growth of their store.

A survey by Alteryx and RetailWire states that 81% of retails say they gather shopper insights. 76% of them consider it to be critical to their performance in the market. But it also highlights that while they’re collecting data, most of them are not able to do so effectively or even put it to use for processes like retail stock management.

In this post, we’re discussing what retail analytics is, why it is important and how you can use it to get more customers, drive higher value sales and retail stock management.

What is retail analytics?

Retail analytics is the process of providing retailers with analytical data on consumers, inventory levels, sales, supply chain, etc. The in-depth customer data and business insights enable retailers to make data-backed decisions when it comes to marketing, retail stock management and much more.

The data here helps retailers see how they’re performing in existing markets, and at the same time, identify areas of improvement.

For example, when you’re using a retail analytics solution, you’re can estimate the demand for a product in a specific location. You want to make sure that you don’t under-stock or over-stock during the period when you’re most likely to make maximum sales. Here, retail analytics helps with retail inventory optimization so that you don’t incur losses in your business.

Simply put, retail analytics helps you see who your customers really are and what channels are driving the most number of conversions and sales for your business.

Why is retail analytics important for businesses?

1. Enables better customer experience

With retail analytics, businesses can make customer-centric decisions by anticipating their needs and offering a seamless customer experience that matches their expectations. By looking into data to improve customer experience, you can increase your sales by 25-95% and your customer retention by 5%. So you’re not just increasing the number of sales you make, but also improving the customer loyalty and lifetime value.

54% of consumers consider ending a relationship with a retailer if they’re not offered tailor-made and relevant content or offers.-

For example, retail analytics can help you identify what kind of buyers are interested in which segment of products. Retailers can then use this data to personalize their marketing campaigns and for retail inventory optimization to drive higher conversions.

Gartner predicts that by 2020, 40% of all data analytics projects will relate to one aspect or the other of customer experience.

2. Enables data-driven strategic decisions

Most retail companies derive insights from fragmented data sets that are captured across different processes in the organization. The lack of a comprehensive view of business results

2. Enables data-driven strategic decisions

Most retail companies derive insights from fragmented data sets that are captured across different processes in the organization. The lack of a comprehensive view of business results leads to ineffective retail stock management and retail inventory optimization. A lot of the decisions made are based on assumptions.

Retail analytics brings all your data and consumer trends into one dashboard. With a unified view of all your data, you’re able to analyze competitive performance metrics including pricing, promotion and more. This enables you to derive actionable insights for better retail inventory optimization and other strategic decisions for business growth.

3. Enables effective operational decisions

Retail analytics monitor their consumer demand and inventory levels in real-time. It gives you an in-depth insight into your store and promotional performance to adapt marketing and sales strategies to tap into market opportunities at the right time and maximize revenue.

For example, the real-time analysis of demand and inventory helps with better forecasting. This, in turn, helps in making effective operational decisions for retail stock management or retail inventory optimization.

4. Enables better sync in online and offline business

Monitoring the performance of your business online, and offline can be a daunting task. There are different parameters that need to be looked into and doing so manually can result in loss of data or not being able to measure the right metrics at the right time.

For example, a business sees a high demand for a product at their offline store. But they’re not able to process this data in real-time to let their online store’s strategy be optimized to handle the demand for this product. In the end, there is a lack of retail inventory optimization, leading to a loss in sales.

With retail analytics, you get a complete picture of both your online and offline business, alongwith the consumer’s shopping journey. It helps you create comprehensive customer profiles and monitor market trends to identify opportunities at the right time.

Companies like Amazon and Starbucks are already making use of retail analytics to improve the customer experience they offer. Putting their data to use, they have also been able to create competitive growth strategies that have helped them expand their business and also increase revenue over time. In fact, Amazon is said to have earned more than $29 billion simply by using retail analytics to make strategic and operational decisions, and retail stock management.

Do you need retail analytics?

Retail is an industry that is growing every day. So if you want to thrive in the years to come, despite the increasing competition, the answer is YES.

Retail analytics gives you easy access to actionables by generating a comprehensive view of your business growth from data across all the channels. So you’re not just able to make better marketing decisions, but also ensure effective retail inventory optimization to continue maximizing your profits through the year.

Now gathering all the data to create a comprehensive retail analytics dashboard, manually, can be overwhelming. Infact, Forrester reports that 74% of retailers want to be data-driven. But only 29% of them are successful at turning data into actionables.

That’s where solutions like BluePi come into the picture.

With ready-made retail dashboards, the solution offers retail analytics that helps businesses gather actionable insights from their data. It breaks down the reports into segments to make them easy-to-understand, making it easy to adapt to frequent market changes and ensure better retail inventory optimization:

• Customer dashboard:Right from customer acquisition costs to measure the effectiveness of a marketing campaign to detailed insights into consumer purchase patterns, retail analytics enables you to align and adapt your growth strategies effectively.
• Product dashboard: With real-time data on the inventory at hand, retail analytics helps manage stocks better. Keeping an eye on best-selling products, rate of sales and sell-through rates enables you to determine product range performance, and also ensure better retail stock management to prevent stock-outs and maximize revenue.
• Store analytics: Understand what works the best for your business when it comes to driving more sales. Track target vs achievement of sales across your stores and different products in real-time with retail analytics to keep your growth strategy optimized for maximum conversions.
• Profitability analytics:Slice and dice data from different stores or across different products and regions to identify where maximum profits lie. Understand varying consumer patterns to optimize your performance in different markets.

Simply put, retail analytics is your only way to get more out of all your data. Ready to turn your store and performance data into more revenue?

Contact us to know more about how to get started.