SMB retailers benefit in three main ways from retail data analytics.
1. Knowing Customers:
Singapore’s Dish-the-Fish fish-stall uses inventory and sales analytics on Vend’s retail management platform and cloud-based POS. Owner Jeffrey Tan prior to switching to the platform, bought what he thought to be the fastest selling fish the ikan kuning. On tracking data by the hour on different fish sales frequencies on Vend’s POS system, he found the leatherjacket fish was fast-selling though pricier. Monitoring in real-time also gave Tan the data-analytics ability to track and cater to the preferences and tastes of his clients. According to data from Accenture, 65% of clients buy from brands that know their brand preferences and buying history.
2. Analyzing Trends:
To use data analytics effectively one must know when and what the customers want even before they produce it. Just look at Dash a fashion store! The store’s Retail Director, Dakota DiSanto, admitted that before switching to LightSpeed’s POS system, her staff spent as many as 8 man-hours per week on studying and tracking manually the sales, inventory, re-order items and so on. According to her the real-time inventory view, sales trends and stock levels across their operational stores in Miami and Los Angeles provided them crucial information on the best sellers, re-ordered units, inventory scheduling, etc well ahead of the demand.
3. The True Costs:
Marquis Gardens’ Ostap Bosak, the General manager, used ACCEO’s POS system. Being Toronto based pond-supply retailers he made use of the transport insights from data analysis on their retail operations. Here’s his story.
On evaluating his data he dropped several suppliers as he found they were earning too little and working too much on them. Though they formed a major portion of the revenue generations the sidelined products were more profitable. He then focused on the main two generators of revenue namely the small pond kit and the pond-less waterfall kit. Bosak stated that he was able to better monitor the ROI from his data analysis as it enabled him to watch over the metric of profit with respect to time spent and efforts spent on it. Bosak reasserts that most businesses do not account for the actual man-hours taken while calculating profitability. In his opinion retail data-analytics helps drill into data in greater minute details to help sustain your operations in a fiercely competitive market.
Which metrics should one analyze?
Analysis of KPIs like foot-fall traffic, margins, sales growth, and walk-in rates speak the numbers-story of any enterprise with accuracy and transparency to enable your making profitable decisions with those data analytics insights. Here are the metrics in retail business analytics every store must and should monitor.
- The square foot rate of sales
- Rate of Retail Conversion
- Net Margins on profit
1. Sales/SqFt:
This index helps. Because, when you know exactly how many sales you earn per sqft of space you can assess and gauge the store’s performance to
- Refurbish your retail layout: Express rearranged the layout of its store bringing its merchandise selling at full-price to the front and taking the other discounted apparel to the rear-end, based on its analytics and trends in sales. The results showed in a spurt of sales in the more profitable full-price range.
- Pile up effectively: The fashion boutique Covet’s owner Adrienne Wiley cautions retailers to carefully monitor sales data when they decide on inventories and range of products to sell. She benefited by stocking up the necklaces and tweaking the sales/hour figures in her data analytics analysis.
2. Rate of Retail Conversion:
Browsers are common and this metric gauges how many of them you convert into sales or buyers of your merchandise. So, why study and analyze data when you cannot use it. Right? No, wrong! Here’s what to do with it.
- Figure out why customers buy and what keeps them from buying: Your low sales could result from poor displays, long billing times, lack of sales reps or customers not finding what they want. If you take the time to speak to and observe customers respond you can find ways to make their journey more pleasurable and this would result in repeat sales and loyal customers.
- Set goals and train your employees: Employees are an organizational asset. Train employees to make the customer experience good using goal-setting, loyalty-rewards and incentives. The Friedman Group Founder Harry Friedman claims training helps retail organizations push sales 15-25%.
Wrapping up, there can be no doubt that data analytics enables boosting sales. So, do a course in data analysis with Imarticus Learning. They get you career-ready from day one in a variety of interesting subjects.
