Essential new ways to unify your people, data, and process for unfair advantage

Data is at the heart of new retail. Consumers are walking, tweeting, data distributors.

The online channel is no longer separate. In a world where shoppers are online, all the time, the retailer must provide a unified experience across every consumer interaction.

Analytics and channel optimization is at the heart of new retail. Agile technology enables channel-specific and context-sensitive customer engagement. While online retailers briefly had the advantage, in-store analytics now give bricks-and-mortar the tools to fight back and bring more traffic to stores, higher shopper engagement, and deeper loyalty.

Not that it’ easy, because the environment keeps shifting. Disruptive new business models, from subscription commerce, to consumer-to-consumer and on-demand, are based on loyalty to retailer, loyalty to brand, and on convenience. Consumers now seek convenience and personalization at every stage of the shopping journey. The world has changed.

Or has it? If you’re the CEO of a medium sized retailer, it’s nice to hear Amazon invests 6% of sales in technology to compete on analytics, but how can you keep up?

As a medium-sized retailer, chances are that there are a few fundamentals needed in aligning strategy with execution. You need to unify data and business processes along your networked supply chain. Before you optimize your price, promotions, ranging, space, stock, customer lifecycle, and marketing mix, you need to align goals and behavior between your business departments.

To create alignment, you need to start talking the same language based on a common understanding of value-creation.

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This series introduces retail value-drivers, how companies use them in planning, reporting and analysis and lessons for mid-sized retailers to punch above their weight and better share information.

Read Part 2 here