Analytics in Action
Neeraj Manoria
"The most expensive thing a retailer can do is open a non-performing store".
Retailers have realized that by investing in technology to better develop their customer information, they can outperform their competitors.
Retail IT spending is expected to increase from $22 billion in 2005 to almost $31 billion by 2009, an increase of almost 41 percent, according to AMI Partners. Over the last five or so years, many retailers have invested in their back end, supply chain and distribution operations -- particularly in response to Wal-Mart's growing dominance. Now it is the front end's turn.
The goal of these new initiatives is for companies to gain a better understanding of their customers. For instance, some retailers are turning to their online Web stores to develop new insights about their customer base.Web analytics is not just about trying to drive visitors to the site, but also understanding what people do once they get there.
For instance, many retailers are looking at search terms entered into their Web stores, to better understand what customers care about. Software’s allows retailers to leverage raw customer data to identify customers, monitor their shopping patterns, make merchandising decisions, better focus marketing, and even determine where the next store should be.
Various IT companies in India are focusing their attention to leverage the huge potential in the analytics. Estimates suggest that India could account for one third of the total $17 billion global market by 2007
The availability of skilled manpower is a success factor for India to become a significant player. Analytics offers India a chance to move out of labor arbitrage and migrate to the higher end of the value chain of knowledge activities.
Neeraj
2 comments:
very informative article, but request to the author to also add a link to the "original post" so that participants can gain the complete picture... in this case the link to the current log is : http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/49917.html
suggestion to all that in future all posts on "Retailog" have credit given to the original author as its probably more informative for the participants of this blog
Indian retailing is witnessing a technology revolution as never before.
Retailers like RPG have taken the intiative of migrating from an Oracle MMS to SAP based platforms. Though Raheja backed retail group Shopper's Stop, has been one of the first retailers to have implemented SAP across their entire chain way back in the mid Nineties, others followed suit in getting the processes right and then getting into improving their technology platforms.
Wal*Mart has a tie up with many Retail IT companies to enable their large scale operations. They have a collaboration with JDA for Space Planning solutions, with Oracle for some of their warehouse management operations, and the list is endless.
This proves that a retailer, in order to be sleeker in operating profits, are associating themselves with various Retail IT companies based on their respective core competencies.
This is an intersting post and I agree with the thought that any learnings from other websites, while posting on "Retailog" should be acknowledged thus ensuring credibility of "Retailog".
--Bala
Post a Comment