Business Intelligence in the retail industry

 

In any e-commerce business, correct data at the right time can help you make well-prepared with strong data-driven decisions. You can gain deeper knowledge about customer behaviors, attitudes, needs & pain-points which is key for the success of the retail business.
Need for Business Intelligence in Retail
According to the recent study, the worldwide business intelligence and analytics market expected to reach 22.8 billion US dollars by 2022. Retail businesses consist of an enormous amount of data from supplier data to customer buying behavior, employee information to inventory details. BI tools like Microsoft’s Power BI store these data points and generate actionable insights via graphical representation of customer needs & trends. Using this tool, retailers can personalize the data and target the products to the customers as per their wants and needs.
Nowadays, consumers expect good quality, low-priced products. They want to engage with retailers in the easiest & fastest way possible. They are highly-informed before they purchase any product through the reviews & ratings in the social media & websites.

Overcoming the challenges

The retail Business Intelligence framework lets you prepare for, and analyze the big data to figure out the patterns in consumer purchasing behavior. It will monitor, plan and evaluate the success of your promotional activities and get some insights into how your customers react to marketing incentives, competition & promotions. It will analyze the user engagement level(Share, clicks, likes & comments) in the social media to track the demographics & buying patterns. With the real-time data, companies can reduce their supply cycles respective to the customer preferences.

Supply chains have become more complex in the recent years. Products have to be available on shelves at all times, there is a consistent pressure of ensuring fast restoration, often multiple times a day, while reducing the inventory inside outlets.

Competitors are the real barrier for a retail business to grow. If they outsmart you in the business, the company will be kicked out from the market. Using any BI tool, companies can enable 24/7 real-time monitoring of your competitors including their profiling, business model analysis & competitive forecasting. Gain knowledge about your competitor’s offer, pricing & identify what you are missing out and find out the potential opportunities for your company’s growth.

Advantages of BI

Companies that can tap into good customer support can deliver 5.7 times more profit than their competitors.

By handling the data in a meaningful way, companies can better understand their market and monetize on it. Using all the big data and transforming it to easy actionable steps allows companies to plan and strategize the business more effectively as per the market needs. If the business doesn’t operates so efficiently, companies have to identify the pain points early on and it can be quickly eliminated to improve the business.

Customers now expect companies to interact with them on an Individual level. A satisfied customer is 5 times more likely to make a repeat purchase & 4 times more likely to refer a friend. Your marketing campaigns need to directly connect with every individual as per their interests because customer satisfaction is vital.

In the modern era, business should be able to adapt, future-focused & personalized.

Author: Mahindan Uthayakumar

Keywords

#Business Intelligence
#Retail
Reference:

Instinctools. 2021. How is-business intelligence changing the retail industry- Instinctools[Online] Available at: <https://www.instinctools.com/blog/how-is-business-intelligence-changing-the-retail-industry> [Accessed 2 March 2021].

Synoptek. 2021. How Business Intelligence Solutions Benefit the Retail Industry- Synoptek[Online] Available at: <https://synoptek.com/insights/it-blogs/business-intelligence-solutions-for-retail-success/> [Accessed 2 March 2021].
Image reference: Depositphotos,123RF


Comments

  1. After reading this blog I got a knowledge of Business intelligence and how retailers utilizes business intelligence in their. Business intelligence gives business Better insight into company operations and finance, Streamlined decision-making process, Improved company efficiency, Reporting and data analysis automation, Regular access to the latest information about the company situation. I think every companies should adapt business intelligence for better performance.

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  3. Beautiful piece of writing on "Business intelligence in the retail industry. According to me, Companies have been attempting to increase the efficient use of funds in their budgets for information infrastructure investments as a result of today's dynamic market situation. By using business intelligence techniques, these organisations can get more information with the same amount of money. IT budgets are not necessarily decreasing or leveling off, according to Rubin (Chabrow, 2004), but rather businesses are transitioning from a cost-cutting mode to one that emphasises agility and performance. The massive regular growth in company data necessitates more funds and investment in the technology and resources needed for collecting timely and critical information to aid decision-making. This requirement spawned a slew of market intelligence techniques aimed at processing large amounts of data gathered from current applications and presenting it in a manner that businesses would use to make everyday strategic decisions.

    --Thomas Devasia

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  4. Brilliant work. This blog informatively explains about business intelligence and what are the needs of it in retail business. Business intelligence associate business analytics, data mining, data visualization, data tools and infrastructure. BI has had a suppressed past as a buzzword. Olden business intelligence, capital letters and all, really emerged in the year of 1960s just as a system for transferring information with in organizations only. Business intelligence can now help organizations for making a better decision by keeping present and past data within their business background. BI really helps to analyse the customer behaviour too. Anyway, this blog explains the crucial role of BI in the present business world. Well done.

    Hari.

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