Retail
Consumers are getting smarter
They’re incorporating new technologies and more information into their daily lives. People are more connected, empowered and demanding than ever before, and as such, they can choose where, how and when they want to shop.
More than ever, it’s a buyer’s market. This presents challenges for retailers, who have to provide a seamless shopping experience – providing the right products in the right place.
For this reason, Retailer "Standouts" are looking at how household economics and human behavior affects shopping behaviour.
“ Retailing is emerging as a real-world incubator for testing how computer firepower and smart software can be applied to social science – in this case, how variables like household economics and human behavior affect shopping.” - NewYork Times1
Thousands of retailers worldwide rely on IBM Business Analytics software to deliver smarter retail.
Retailers want to outperform in areas such as:
The shopping experience
- identify, report on and analyse trends to respond to consumer buying needs and behavior
- use predictive models and association rules to determine which group of products work best for which customers
- gain insight into customer perceptions of service, store, products and merchandising, and integrate results across the business
- create flexible seasons for basics, seasons and “waves.”
Promotion planning, merchandise planning and market basket analysis
- optimise merchandise levels, minimise out-of-stocks and manage inventory costs
- conduct market basket analysis to anticipate customer response and improve promotions
- develop plans for key financial indicators including returns, cost of goods, supply chain costs and gross profit
- plan for the impact of markdowns and promotions on inventory value and margin.
Smarter operations
- align corporate and store operations around critical revenue and profitability targets; and quickly adjust plans and resource allocations to achieve profitable growth
- set, measure and monitor key performance metrics based on standard financial statements
- use predictive models to improve recruitment and optimise staffing decisions
- increase cost savings by comparing and benchmarking performance across stores, channels, regions and divisions
- gain visibility into key metrics across the chain: sales, labour, inventory and promotions
- monitor turnover and employee productivity.
1 Steve Lohr, A Data Explosion Remakes Retailing, The New York Times, January 3, 2010.
Significant experience in Retail
The Cortell team has significant experience in Retail from a supply and demand perspective and all the components of that process:
- procurement
- distribution
- capacity
- demand planning
- open to buy modelling
- product costing
- customer profiling
- segmentation
- wastage
- cold storage
- damage and transport modelling
In fact, we can work with you on the traditional aspects of budgeting, forecasting and planning processes while integrating the financial aspects with the operational aspects of your business. We bring true profitability modelling to your business using activity based costs per client, line of business and product.
We will help you implement IBM Cognos dashboards and scorecards so that you can:
- monitor sales and margin performance by channel, division, region, store, production line, category or vendor
- manage merchandise sales, margins and stock levels across channels and locations
- track financial goals in terms of growth, profitability, key controllable expenses and return on net assets to measure marketing effectiveness
- evaluate supply chain activities, vendor or customer performance and logistics operations across a range of metrics.
We will help you consolidate your data and turn it into meaningful information with IBM Cognos reporting and analysis to:
- report on performance by channel, division, region, store or account, category or product to maximise profits
- analyse sales transaction data to understand demand, optimise staffing levels and improve in-stock position
- understand consumer and market trends, and react quickly to initiate targeted promotions and provide a more positive shopping experience
- consolidate, analyse and report on market basket information.
We will enable you and your team to anticipate and respond with more precision. IBM SPSS Predictive Analytics lets you answer key business questions:
- how can I understand product sales patterns and buying preferences to increase sales and margins?
- which products are most likely to drive customers to buy?.
We will introduce IBM SPSS Market Basket Analysis to your business, giving you algorithms to analyse your transactions and customer data, relate it to previous purchases and build predictive models that can be applied to:
- decide what categories or products to display or promote together
- decide whether an offer is valid for a particular customer
- predict the probability that the customer will respond to the offer
- calculate the value of the customer accepting the offer.
Retail White Papers
Delivering a Smarter Shopping Experience with Predictive Analytics: Innovative Retail Strategies
This white paper explores the practical applications of predictive analytics within retail and how it can be used to deliver a smarter shopping experience.
Social Media Analytics – Making Customer Insights Actionable
This white paper will examine the role social media can play in presenting a more strategic view of customer data and how the right combination of technologies can deliver insight to help companies more effectively meet perpetually shifting consumer demands expressed through, and influenced by, these dynamic communication channels.
Analytics and the smarter consumer: Three ways to win
Understanding and winning customers isn’t easy. The problem isn’t lack of data. Data pours in from multiple systems, channels and regions. The challenge is how to extract meaning from it to inform decision-making and enable productivity and agility in the face of market demands.
Case Studies
Enabling Steinhoff to focus on implementing company strategies, rather than planning for them
Challenge
In the past, Steinhoff’s budgets were completed centrally by its finance team, but the company wanted business managers to be more directly responsible.
“We wanted ownership of the numbers to be with the relevant managers to make them accountable for their targets and responsible for their results,” says Louise Cooper, Group Accounting Manager, Steinhoff.
To support this approach, Steinhoff required a new budgeting, forecasting and planning solution that could collect a wide range of operational and financial data.
The system had to include advanced business rules (including franchise calculations) that the company could apply when developing planning scenarios.
Other considerations included the transparency of calculations and the ability to consolidate data so that it reflects both company and brand results. Steinhoff also wanted to minimise the learning curve for managers.
IBM Cognos Retail Solutions on YouTube
Elie Tahari used IBM Cognos® to create a seamless reporting framework that provides granular, real-time information from the sales floor to its suppliers' inventory and production schedules.
Retail Discussion/Quote/Demo
IBM Cognos Business Analytics software helps your organization better understand, anticipate and shape business outcomes. You can achieve breakthrough results and outperform your competition.
Cortell Australia will engage your team with senior business consultants who will help you assess which capabilities within IBM Cognos Business Analytics derive the most business value.
We offer an initial high level assessment followed by a customised demo and quotation. We can also help you build your internal business case.
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