Canadian Retailer - Holiday 2015 - 36

TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS

THE POWER OF RETAIL
DATA ANALYTICS
With all of the information out there available to retailers,
the industry is just scratching the surface concerning the
potential of the data and related uses
BY SHAWN SMITH, retail solutions specialist, SAS Canada
"THE customer is always right". Gordon Self-

ridge, founder of Selfridge's department store,
made the statement in 1909. And his iconic
words have guided the retail industry for more
than a century (though there are some that
argue they have misguided the retail industry).
Regardless of which side of that particular coin
you choose, it's no secret that customers want
better service, and they'll repay it with their
hard-earned dollars.
What's different about today's shopper is
that he or she is more empowered than they
ever have been before. Social media can affirm
or condemn retailers' reputations. Product reviews are instantaneously available. Comparison shopping sites deliver the best price from
dozens of retailers. And the technology that
may be transforming the customer experience
most-mobile devices-puts all of that information into their hands when they are shopping
online and in-store, and at the point of sale.
CHANGING ROLES

The retail customer has many roles today, as
opposed to someone who simply puts cash in
your till. They are collaborators who use social
networks to advise and be advised. They are
voracious content consumers. They are discerning price and service comparators. And they're
demanding around-the-clock service through
multiple channels.
Great retailers have always been able to meet
the customers' evolving needs by way of great
instinct. They still do. In fact, instinct is still a
powerful strategic differentiator in appealing to
the customers' preferences and desires, possibly
still the most important. But it's now supported
by data capture and analytics technology that
provides vastly richer and more easily consumed
information to make those strategic decisions.

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CANADIAN RETAILER | HOLIDAY 2015

FIVE PILLARS

For the data to provide that strategic support, however, a certain amount of retooling is required. Driving value from data is
built on five pillars.
Data

Obviously, an evidence-based decision-making
process is built on data. It's actually easier for retail
than most verticals because of the high volume of
structured transactional data-clean, rich, diverse,
and culled from point-of-sale transactions and loyalty programs and a myriad of other easily defined data sources.
It's actually harder for retail because of the volume of unstructured data-no other vertical attracts more social chatter.
People

The most important pillar, where instinct meets
technology. A business needs people with business
skillsets who can visualize the relationships among
various data. There's a huge demand for post-graduate
data scientists. They're rare, they're expensive talent,
and the competition for them is a new frontier for recruiting. That kind of talent should be reserved for strategic tasks.
But those with hands-dirty business acumen should also have the
tools to make tactical, operational, and logistical decisions based
on enterprise data. We call these roles the citizen data scientist;
those close enough to the ground to know what questions to ask,
to determine relationships among datasets. They're an invaluable
resource-if they have accessible tools to glean insight from them.
Technology

There are two tools critical to enabling the citizen
data scientist. One is the hardware and software
power to allow the processing of vast volumes of
data in near-real-time; many of these are based on
open source technologies like Hadoop and MapReduce. The other is analytics tools that are usable by business talent: visual graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that are intuitive to
someone who is not a technologist, forecasting tools, predictive
analytics. That's the foundation on which business analytics lies.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Canadian Retailer - Holiday 2015