The market is pretty competitive these days. Then again, when has the market not been competitive? Heck, strong competition is one of the leading reasons why the general economic market became so big in the first place!
We can sing and dance in joy all day about how big our markets have become. But the amount of competition it represents is, of course, a problem for any business owner. And while, in some way, this has always been a problem, standing out from the crowd now simply isn’t as simply as it used to be. “Having the best products at the best prices” just doesn’t seem to cut it anymore. So what do we do?
The availability of real-time analytics data is crucial here. Enterprises should take the advantage of a stream processing platform and derive immediate insights from their data which they can share with internal and external stakeholders. Stream processing powered by Apache Flink – Ververica provides integrated solutions for data-driven companies at a large scale.
Well, we also look at what the bigger retail companies are doing right now. They’re not just investing all their money in products. They’re looking into new areas of research. Namely, they’re looking at customer data analytics on a large scale.
What are the benefits?
There are two main aims of getting hold of customer analytics. Both of them are, in and of themselves, benefits for any business. They both lead to the ultimate benefit in the world of retail: more sales!
Good data analytics provides you with a more in-depth and accurate predictions of customer behavior. What we’re talking about is taking it down to the micro level. We’re not predicting the behavior of customers as a whole: we can predict the behavior of a single given customer!
Do I need specialist employees?
Data analysts have been important parts of most businesses for a very long time. But what “data” means in the business world has changed a lot. The kind of data we’re talking about here is often referred to as big data. What that term means has changed over the past thirty years. But today it refers mostly to the new kind of data that companies are tracking.
So do you need a data analyst? There’s a lot of software out there that lets you record and view data in ways that are easy for anyone to understand. But it you’re running a really big operation, you should probably hire specialists.
Can this be done online and offline?
When people think about this kind of data analyzing, they tend to think about online shopping. After all, our online actions can be tied so easily to our social media presence. The use of our email address makes it easy for companies to observe a lot of detail.
But you don’t have to work online exclusively to take advantage of data analytics. Systems like TallyRegister POS can be used in brick-and-mortar stores as well as warehouses. Remember that most people are still buying in actual stores, not online. ‘Big data’ needs to include them more than the online shoppers!
How big is this “data craze” in retail?
In 2013, retailers spent an estimated $50 billion on the means to acquire this kind of data. Within the next couple of years, this industry of business intelligence is expected to rise by about $100 billion more than that.
All businesses, from the big to the small, are finding the advantage in data analytics. Don’t fall behind!
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Marshal Hubs
Priyanka Srivastava
John Stephen
