When Jeff Bezos launched his online bookstore, Amazon, in 1994, he could never have imagined that it would become the retail giant it is today. Keeping up with the rapid pace of change in retail is no easy feat, but retailers must adapt to the new ways customers buy to remain relevant. By using sophisticated enterprise software, with analytics at the core, retailers can easily move from insight to action to boost their bottom lines and meet increasingly demanding consumer expectations. Modern actionable analytics allow retailers to extract key customer information and execute critical tasks as if they were real calculation experts. The retailers who have invested in business intelligence have been able to make smarter data-driven decisions that helped them grow their businesses, while the ones still using antiquated software suffered a darker fate. This article covers the top fifteen retail analytics retailers can’t afford to ignore.
Most retailers actually struggle to make the most of their data
- “74 percent of firms say they want to be data-driven, but only 29 percent are successful at connecting analytics to action.” – Forrester
- “Only somewhere between 20 percent and 50 percent of enterprise structured data is being curated and available to enterprise BI tools and applications.” – Forrester
- “Of the 700 million websites that exist, 72 percent fail to consistently engage users or drive conversions.” – University of Pennsylvania
- “72 percent of marketers are still focused primarily on knowledge gathering rather than making real and actionable use of their data.” – Forbes
The companies effectively using big data can increase their sales and profits, and retain customers
- “50 percent of companies who master the art of customer analytics are likely to have sales significantly above their competitors.” – McKinsey
- “Companies championing the use of customer analytics are 6.5 times more likely to retain customers, 7.4 times more likely to outperform their competitors on making sales to existing customers (upsell and cross-sell strategies), and nearly 19 times more likely to achieve above-average profitability.” – McKinsey
Retail analytics play an important role in improving the customer experience
- “54 percent of consumers would consider ending their relationship with a retailer if they are not given tailor-made, relevant content and offers – CMO Council.
- “By 2020, more than 40 percent of all data analytics projects will relate to an aspect of customer experience.” – Gartner
Most influential business leaders recognize the value of retail analytics
- “49 percent of high-performance companies have CEOs who rate the benefits of having strategic, actionable insight based on customer analytics as very to extremely important.” – McKinsey
- “89 percent of business leaders believe big data will revolutionize business operations in the same way the Internet did.” – Forbes
Retail analytics provide many benefits, including wiser decision-making, increased engagement, and higher retention
- “Highly data-driven organizations are 3 times more likely to report significant improvement in decision-making.” – Think with Google
- “Predictive marketers are 1.8 times more likely to consistently exceed shared organizational goals” – Forbes
- “Eighty-six percent of mobile marketers have reported success from personalization — including increased engagement, higher revenue, improved conversions, better user insights, and higher retention.” – University of Pennsylvania
- “Most marketers recognize the importance of data in advertising and customer experience efforts, with over 77 percent saying they’re confident in the practice and its prospects for future growth.” – Adweek
- “When marketers were asked which best describes how they measure the impact of data-driven marketing initiatives, the top three responses involved customer experience: 56 percent responded customer loyalty; 55 percent answered customer satisfaction; and 54 percent cited customer retention.” – Forbes
The analytics software market is continually growing
- “Big data and business analytics worldwide revenues will grow from nearly $122B in 2015 to more than $187B in 2019, an increase of more than 50 percent over the five-year forecast period.” – Forbes
- “By the end of 2020, the business intelligence (BI) and analytics software market is forecasted to grow to $22.8 billion.” – Gartner
- “This year, the IaaS (Insights-as-a-Service) market will double, with 80 percent of firms relying on insights service providers for some portion of insights capabilities in 2018.” – Forrester
- “Between 2016 and 2019, spending on real-time analytics will grow three times faster than spending on standard analytics.” – Gartner
- “60 percent of marketers believe that data-driven marketing drives profitability.” – Forbes
