Retail analytics focuses on providing insights related to sales, inventory, customers, and other important aspects crucial for merchants’ decision-making process. The discipline encompasses several granular fields to create a broad picture of a retail business’ health, and sales alongside overall areas for improvement and reinforcement. Essentially, retail analytics is used to help make better choices, run businesses more efficiently, and deliver improved customer service analytics.
Today’s retail business is a tough one to run. The Internet and mega retailers have brought down prices, driving profits down and putting the squeeze on smaller businesses. If you want your business to survive, you need someone on your team with a strong understanding of retail analytics.
For most businesses, retailers in particular, the number one resource is their customers. By studying customer behavior and purchases, retailers are able to increase sales and make better predictions about what their customers want.
Why is Retail Analytics important?
Apart from keeping an eye on trends, it allows retailers to get the most out of their business, understand their customers’ buying habits, and see how much profit each customer would contribute.
The speed at which retailers react to changing market conditions is crucial for both insuring profit margins and making adjustments to meet the needs of their consumers. By making sure decisions are made with up-to-date information, retailers can stay ahead of their competition, boost sales, and increase market share.
Retail analytics is a broad field which encompasses several sub-disciplines and technology that is constantly evolving. It’s an ideal field for anyone with analytical skills and an interest in working with customers to understand their wants and needs. Whether you work in a large corporation or own your own small business, retail analytics can help you work smarter and drive sales. It’s also a great way to gain experience and job skills whilst still working in the same field. It is a rapidly growing field that has no end in sight, helping retailers achieve their goals with efficiency and up-to-date information.
How is Analytics used in Retail?
Analytics is all about opportunity identification — analysing data that’s already collected through channels such as customer surveys and online sales. This gives retail analysts the information they need to make informed decisions, and it’s these inferences that can give retailers a competitive edge.
All this is best done through robust analytics platforms, which allow not only for easy data analysis but full-stack solutions for valuable business insights. These platforms are not just for retailers — they’re used in smaller businesses too and of course by consumers who want to make the most of their purchases. Typical applications include customer analytics and personalisation. Conbi helps carry out retail analytics in an efficient manner- helping retailers understand in-depth market trends and patterns within minutes with the help of data visualisations.
Retail Analytics Software : Examples
The aim of any retail analytics software is to transform data into valuable insight, and there are numerous software solutions that can help. Here’s a look at some of the key players:
Microsoft’s Power BI is an integrated suite for streaming and analysing your retail data with built-in security. It gives you the tools you need to make your retail operation more efficient and manage your inventory effectively.
One of the most popular platforms in the retail analytics industry is Shopify Analytics provides a complete website solution on the cloud for retailers. You can analyse marketing, sales and customer relationships with feature packed dashboards to display the data you need.
IBM is one of the biggest names in information technology, and it’s no wonder why so many businesses are now turning to its platforms. IBM Watson Analytics gives you all the data intel you need to transform your business.
Another big name in retail analytics is Google Analytics, which analyses online customer behaviour through a variety of platform tools. It even shows you where your customers typically walk around before they make a purchase.
What’s next?
Conbi helps carry out retail analytics in an efficient manner- helping retailers understand in-depth market trends and patterns within minutes with the help of data visualisations.
Conbi’s AI-powered engine helps users to interact with the system to explore data without having to be experts. Instead, users can ask questions in natural language to explore business data and uncover trends. In addition, Conbi uses nimble deep machine learning algorithms that allow it to be as much as 98% accurate at parsing natural language queries.
Conclusion
Retail Analytics is important for any retailer, and all the platforms and analytics tools listed above will provide you with the information you need to make better business decisions based on solid data analysis. If you’re a retailer, I hope this post has provided you with a better insight into which platform or platform tool is best suited to the problems you’re facing.
The whole world is moving towards digitisation as technology becomes more and more advanced. With so many digital innovations taking place in the world, businesses are working hard to keep up with the trends and capitalize on them in order to stand out from their competitors.
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