Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of an article from Retail Paradox, Retail Systems Research's weekly analysis on emerging issues facing retailers.
Even though 85 percent of respondents to our Business Intelligence (BI) benchmark survey in 2011 reported some activity in developing an enterprise-wide BI strategy, it occurred to us that this might be a good time to explain exactly what we mean by the term and re-iterate once again why it's a good idea.
Let's start with "why it's a good idea." When correctly executed, an enterprise-wide BI strategy can solve a lot of seemingly intractable problems, get the entire organization "singing from the same hymnal" and postpone ripping and replacing core systems for a long time. It can relieve a lot of pain.
What kind of pain? Here's a short list of legacy problems that can be solved:
- The merchandising hierarchy we have is incomplete, incompatible with newer systems, or just plain out-of-date.
- Everyone is operating with different sets of numbers.
- Each channel has separate product descriptions and other qualifying information.
- We have multiple versions of customer data truth.
- We need to measure everyone by the same yardsticks, and satisfy new reporting requirements.
So those are our pain points, but what exactly does creating an enterprise-wide BI strategy actually entail?
The successful enterprise-wide BI strategy will have several critical components:
- Infrastructure: Hardware is now available to support "Big Data." Build the integration bridges from operational systems directly to the data warehouse.
- Executive Involvement: Business users are ready and willing to become engaged. They'll even talk about infrastructure issues since they recognize the importance of overcoming them.
- A Roadmap: An enterprise-wide strategy should include a step-wise approach to adding incremental value with BI and its associated outputs. Think about appropriate hardware platforms, data transformation tools and techniques, and layering in reporting, alerts, and finally advanced analytics that are retail-specific solutions.
- A Wireless Plan for Stores: Even the best insights will lose value if they're not delivered in a timely fashion to the people that need them in the field. The time is now to put a wireless infrastructure in place. Customers can use 3G and 4G to educate themselves. Retailers will need the wireless infrastructure for store managers and employees. Letting customers "hop on the bus" will just be a plus.
- Modern Delivery Vehicles: The days of desktop dashboards and flash reports are drawing to an end. "Consumer grade usability" has become the order of the day. No one gets a user manual with consumer apps. BI can be equally as simple. Plan for simplicity as an output of back-office complexity.
The task isn't simple and it will take some time. But when you're done, you'll have the extensible framework you need to go forward in our rapidly changing times. New channels, new types of customers, and more specificity are all expected, but not anticipated. Enterprise-wide BI can help us meet the challenge.