Finding a competitive advantage in today’s retail industry requires gathering data and insights into current supply and demand trends. In terms of customer opportunity, the market prospect for Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) and retail companies across the nation will be highly influenced by customer and product data, especially in the near future.

According to EKN Research, 4 in 5 retailers currently use an enterprise-grade analytics tool. However, less than a third have developed an enterprise-wide capability. We have established that fully utilising multichannel and omnichannel retailing is defined as incorporating multiple channels in customer transactions with a seamless experience across all of them. In this context, let’s look at achieving a consistent shopping experience across sales channels, silos of structured data on multiple platforms and real-time feeds of unstructured data as business goals through Tableau.

Firstly, we look at maintaining a consistent shopping experience across various sales channels. Is your organization delivering a consistent and satisfying shopping experience regardless of how customers shop and buy, whether it’s online, in-store or through mobile apps? Can your organization coordinate customer and product data, promotions, pricing, and inventory across channels according to demographics, location and buying behaviours? According to the National Retail Federation (NRF) Foundation, consumers live in a multichannel world. Retailers that integrate online with their offline, and their mobile with their in-store, have a major advantage.

“How well can your organization sell the way empowered consumers want to shop?”

It is also ideal for your organisation to create silos of structured data on multiple platforms. In that sense, what type of big data initiatives does your organization have underway? How integrated is your organization’s data management across business systems (i.e. ERP, CRM, supply chain, etc.) and does it cover various business functions and geographic locations? Does your data management include external sources, such as syndicated data from a company like Nielsen? According to a research by MIT, most organizations use less than 50% of their data, and even with all that is available, only 35% say they frequently have access to the data they need to make key decisions.

“Did you know there are new approaches to analysis that leverages your big data investment to provide better access and actionable insights to the business?”

Lastly, real-time feeds of unstructured data are also essential in creating a seamless multichannel and omnichannel retailing process. What’s the split of your data volume and growth between structured and unstructured data? What are the types and sources of unstructured data that you have or want to have in real-time? How are you making this new information available in a usable format for the business to extract value? According to a recent Intel study, 63% of analytics will be real-time, as opposed to batch, by 2015.

“How are you making this new information available in a usable format for the business to extract value?”

Accelteam has been actively working with customers from the various technology industries driving business improvements through advanced data-processing technology. With the aim to promote full use of mass and complex data sets, Accelteam has the solutions to help companies use data to generate better and smarter business decisions.
In fact, for the past two decades, AccelTeam has been one of the leaders in providing advanced data-processing technology throughout the region. If you would like to learn more about Tableau, please reach out to us at info@accelteam.com.