Driving the Next-Gen of Retail

Data Analytics is going to exist for a long time and there is definitely a huge opportunity in the analytics space. Today, the Chief Analytics and Digital Officer are replacing the Chief Marketing Officer, and have become more critical, because the whole gamut of traditional marketing is moving to digital marketing. In the webinar series of ‘Learnings from corporate leaders’ conducted recently by a management college in Pune, Syed Rahim, Senior Director Customer Success and Consulting, Manthan, gave an insightful talk on how Data Analytics is shaping the retail sector and has become an integral part of marketing, along with guidelines to achieve one’s dreams and goals. Professional with over 15 years of experience in enabling retailers to drive exponential growth with marketing strategy, customer experience and analytics, Syed Rahim, is responsible to manage multimillion dollar accounts and spearhead customer success and consulting vertical across the Middle East and Africa region. He has worked across all critical functions of retail like Marketing, Operations, Strategy, NSO, Planning and BI/Analytics. He has worked in retail with giants like Reliance Retail, Mahindra & Mahindra and Shoppers Stop

"If you are afraid of failing, you will never learn. If you do not learn, you do not experience and if you do not experience, you do not gain knowledge. So, it is very important to fail"

You will not be able to go ahead and conquer the world unless and until you have a plan and you have a goal. Goals are milestones in terms of what you want to become. When I came into my first retail job, after my MBA, I was very clear in terms of asking myself, what and where I want to land up in the next two years, five years, seven years, ten years and so on. That actually gave me visibility on whether I am taking the right steps. It helped me evaluate myself against the goals I had set. Once you step into the corporate world, there will be expectations form each one of you and you cannot achieve those expectations unless and until you have refined your goals.

VITAL TO GROW AND SURVIVE IN THE CORPORATE WORLD

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1. Don’t be afraid to fail big - If you are afraid of failing, you will never learn. If you do not learn, you do not experience and if you do not experience, you do not gain knowledge. So, it is very important to fail. We all are in a race of winning, but we forget that only winning will not teach us all the lessons in life. If you are only winning, you only know how to win, but the day when you fail, you will not know how to get up from that spot and start running again. So, don’t be afraid what is important here is not failing with the same mistake again and again.

2. Experiences get translated into knowledge - When I was a student, I used to be very happy thinking that getting into the corporate, my life will be settled and after that everything will be rosy. It is never a straight path, there are always ups and downs. So, don’t ever start with a mindset that it’s going to be a rosy smooth path, it’s not so. If you want to dream big, if you want to make your dreams come true, then definitely you need to be aware that it’s not a straight path and you need to be preparing yourself to walk on a criss-cross path. Definitely, all those will be your experience and experiences get translated into knowledge.

3. Don’t be afraid to fall but fall forward - It’s not about falling, it’s about moving ahead after the fall and learning from those mistakes. What is critical today, which I have observed with a lot of people I deal with is that they all are certain of what they know but many of them don’t realise, what you don’t know is also very important. So, how and what would you do by learning what you don’t know, is very critical. Start asking yourself what you don’t know and improvise and learn those new skills you don’t know. If you do not upgrade your skills as you go along, it will be very difficult, because the whole dynamics is definitely different, critical, demanding and to sustain that it is very important to keep upgrading yourself.

4. Respect time and people - How important it is to know certain things, which we generally ignore in our day-to-day life. For example, ‘Time’, how many of us are actually utilising the working 14 hours in a day? How many of us actually realise that you have just spent one hour without learning anything? It is very critical and crucial for all of us to respect time, even if it is five minutes. Respect one’s time and respect people, if you want to grow and be successful in life. When you respect, it is not about respecting only your superiors, it’s about respecting your own team. I have a team of more than 200 people and I know all of them personally and they know me personally, that is the bond that you need to create to lead teams, be out there and be a part of the team. It is not about respecting people by talking, it is about respecting each other’s views, listening to people what they have to say and working with them to not only realise your dreams but also work for your team to make their dreams come true. With all of this what you are gaining is experience and knowledge.

"Analytics and Marketing today go hand-in-hand and is a very crucial aspect of what we do for the consumers"

5. Know the essence of teamwork - It’s an important skill to have as you go along. It is the right time, when you are studying in college, for all of you to build a foundation of teamwork. You may be doing a lot of exercises in college and experiencing a lot of things in your daily life but it is very important to understand and know the essence of what teamwork is. One of the famous basketball players, Michael Jordan said, “Talent can win games”. I have talent, I know I can do anything, I can code, develop a program of myself and a product of myself, but will it make me go out there and deliver alone? It’s not going to happen. It’s the teamwork, it’s your team up and below it is very crucial to understand how teamwork happens and that comes by practice and not by knowing the theory of it. Teamwork and intelligence put together can definitely make you win a lot of things in your life.

6. Focus has become hyper-focus - Today, focus is old, focus has become hyper-focus, by which I mean it is very critical for you to understand in today’s world, what is important, what needs your attention span and to what period. It’s not that you have a task to do at your hand and you have all the time in the world to do that. Today, the expectation is the task which I used to do in a couple of hours, ten years back, I expect my team to do it in five minutes. That can only be achieved when you are able to hyper-focus. When you are able to classify what is important to you, how much time is needed to do that, and with a very clear focus and attention towards prioritisation. Hyper-focusing is a very important skill set, which will eventually become most sought skill because today’s world is all about having the ability to multitask.

7. Ability to multitask - If you think that you are a marketing person and within the marketing, you only do ATL (Above The Line) work, no, you are expected to do ATL and you are also expected to know BTL (Below The Line) marketing, you are expected to know what is a loyalty programme, you are expected to know how the SRM functions and what’s customer service is, and you are expected to leverage all of the different functional aspects coming through and making sure you function as a TL above the line, and shine with a complete power which has been given to you from the other functions. It is very important for every one of you to develop multitasking as one of the important skills as you go along.

ANALYTICS AND MARKETING

"Keeping customers happy, is a old concept now today it is all about delight. Customer delight is what we focus on in retail"

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What is the future of analytics in retail?

Analytics and Marketing today go hand-in-hand, it is a very crucial aspect of what we do for the consumers. Retail today is all about the consumer. Today, the consumer is being taken very seriously, because consumer or customer is the king we all know that in the marketing terms. When you face a real customer in front of you with an issue or when you face the customer to understand the behaviour of a particular pattern of a purchase a customer is exhibiting, it’s a totally different ball game altogether. I would like to emphasis on what kind of roles have evolved in analytics in retail and how will you as a person, aspire to reach those goals eventually, if you are very keen to be part of the analytics in future.

Evolution of analytics

Just like any other evolution, analytics also had an evolution, which I call ‘Analytics Age’. Analytics started with stone age decades back when people started realising how important data is and how and what data could bring to a business, which would definitely move needles in terms of growth. It was all about getting the data, making sure the data security is put in place and so on. Then came a bronze age where people started realising, what if I have two Terra bytes of data, how do I store it. We had the floppy age of having 15-30 KB floppy discs, then going to a CD drive of 12GB and from there we have evolved to now having cloud computing. So, people have started thinking, as to how do I store and modulate the data in one place, which one can leverage at any point in time. Then came an iron age, which was more about execution and excellence now I have two Terra bytes of data, what do I do with it? How do I use it to drive trends and patterns? How do I use all this data to come out with a meaningful insight, which will help me drive a meaningful consumer behavioural aspect? Once we understood what the data is and how data can be leveraged, how do we engage the consumers with this data? For example, many times we go online for purchasing one thing and end up purchasing three things. How is it happening? It is happening based on the data of what you exhibit as behaviour and data of what others, who are similar to you, exhibit in a similar situation. Now the bigger question is, what is next, what is going to happen in the evolution of analytics?

Overview of analytics functions :

1. Basic analytics - It is about what is doing well and what is not doing well.

2. Investigative analytics - Understanding why a particular product is doing well compared to the other

3. Predictive analytics - If I want to make a particular product sell more, who are the likely customers, who are going to start purchasing from me, who have bought, who have not bought. These are the predictions with a lot of machine learning and advance algorithms, which today enables a retailer to understand the behaviour of the customer and influence them through various channels for customer engagements.

HOW IS ANALYTICS INFLUENCING VARIOUS FUNCTIONS WITHIN RETAIL?

"Finance in retail is understanding the money which flows in, in terms of how I can make my consumers spend more"

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1. Merchandising - What does merchandising do? Merchandising is the team who purchase. When you walk into a mall, you will see different sections and within a section, there are various brands on display and within brands, there are different versions. All of these in retail is termed under merchandising, deciding what product, which version of the product and who will that product cater to and how in the store it is decided as merchandising.

2. Finance - Finance is a stream which all of us know, but finance in retail is slightly more evolved than what we think about as only the balance sheet. Finance in retail is understanding the money which flows in, in terms of how I can make my consumers spend more. It is the evolution of finance today, in the terms of retail. If a consumer is spending 200 rupees today, how will I make the consumer spend additional 25 rupees from his wallet, that is the understanding of share of wallet.

3. Consumer insights - Marketing will eventually move on to understanding the customer himself. What is that customer shopping? If a customer is shopping today on Amazon and spending 200 rupees, what are those products which can bring additional 25 rupees from that customer’s wallet, which he can spend on Amazon? That is what consumer insights basically will tell.

4. Supply chain - Supply chain is the section that decides, say if there is a product in Ludhiana, how will that product connect to Kanyakumari, to Bengaluru, to Kashmir, to Kerala, across all the stores. That’s what supply chain job is. It is very critical in terms of making sure what product stores get is what is sold to the end consumers that walk inside. Today, after the new normal the whole dynamics of the stores have changed. We are all on the digital stores.

5. Procurement - Supply chain is all about delivering the product, but who procures that product. Making sure that the product is available for the supply chain to deliver is important and that’s what procurement is.

6. Multichannel - Multichannel is about how does one leverage multiple channels that customers today use. We are on social media, so that becomes a channel. We are on messaging channels, so that becomes a channel. Obviously, those multichannel engagements using analytics has also gained a very vital role in the analytics maturity of the organisation.

7. Human Resources - Today, you might be wondering what analytics does in human resources. Human resource analytics has become one of the hotbeds today in retail organisations. And not only in retail, but I have also seen it spread across multiple different industry landscapes, where human resources managers are trying to analyse, having multiple models in gaining the behavioural patterns and determining what kind of learning tools have to be enabled to make sure that the skill or the capability of a particular individual can be enhanced, using those analytical tools at the backend.

All of the above processes, which we in retail are doing is for making sure the customer is managed well and making sure the customer is happy. Not only happy, which is old now today it is all about delight. Customer delight is what we focus on in retail.

"The retailer who used to think I do not want to know the customer is finding it difficult to understand the customer and why is he shifting behaviours"

What does the organisation need if it has to leverage analytics?

Leveraging analytics is not about preparing an external report of saying I sold 20 pieces today in store one and two pieces in store two. Analytics is way beyond that. Following are the critical things we are doing in how analytics is completely reshaping itself and rethinking in terms of what a retail organisation can leverage from analytics.

1. Analytics is strategic - Analytics defines a business strategy in terms of how are you going to go ahead and achieve those dreams in terms of the targets, which you have as a business and what are those critical decisions that you take at the top level to make sure the analytics drives or gives you decisions which are more informed. Decisions are no more driven with guts.

2. Analytics is all about understanding the trends - What is that your customer wants or customer’s preferences are, is what analytics helps a buyer while taking a particular decision. So, one understands the consumer behaviour like, who is the consumer today, by leveraging the analytics and making the business strategy, in terms of making sure that the whole gamut of understanding the consumer have more meaningful insights, which would allow each of the business leaders to make a decision.

3. Identifying analytics champions - As organisations, what we do is we have started to identify analytics champions within the organisation, who will be the ear and eye of what consumer thinks and what consumer is exhibiting. And from there we are able to put in the right organisation structure for the analytics team and we are able to support them with the right tools and technics.

We have moved from ‘Know’ to ‘Learn’

We used to believe that we know our customer, but today we have moved away from knowing the customer how much ever we know about the customer today, the customer behaviour cannot be predicted tomorrow. So, we continuously learn what customer behaviour is and it is the core of every single thing that we do. If analytics does not define who is the customer, marketing cannot go back into the market and start targeting the customers with the right channel and right approach to bring that customer into the retail stores or on retail websites and make them shop.

Loyalty has become very crucial

Most of you will have loyalty programmes in your wallet a lot of loyalty cards or a lot of loyalty appsand would be very happy if you get 10-20 per cent discount with some retailer. It’s all about making sure that loyalty stays with the brand because customers today are very volatile. Today, if you do not serve the customer, the customer may go to another store. And then you have to spend three to four times to get the customer back to shopping with you. It is very important to retain customers. The whole ideology of only acquiring customers has moved to retaining the existing customers, which has become the priority.

Engage to hyper-personalise

It’s no more about sending a customer saying that you bought this, so you are interested to buy this. Hyper-personalising is about making sure what individual preferences a customer has. Earlier, it used to be one customer and a hundred other customers similar to the first one, used to get the same recommendations. Today, as a marketing gamut it has moved from there to making sure a customer gets what is more personalised as an individual. It is now about what is the preference of a customer and hyper-personalise the product and the needs of the customer. Hyper-personalisation has become very crucial for us as a marketing tool, which we use in the digital marketing space today.

Undesting my customers

The reason why I say this is, I as an organisation may have best of the algorithm models, I may have best of the machine learning technique, I may have a 200 per cent growth going on but if I don’t realise who is my customer, what does my customer do, what does my customer shop, what does my customer actually buy, in retail it becomes very difficult for me as an individual or as a brand to communicate with my customer. Is this customer going to stop shopping with me as an analytics function it becomes very important for us to connect those dots and making sure we draw the right lines.

KEY TRENDS IN RETAIL TODAY

Customer matrix

The retailer who used to think I do not want to know the customer is finding it difficult to understand the customer and why is the customer shifting behaviours. So, customer matrix has taken a lot of focus it is very dynamic real time user experience, which is why you see a lot of product upgrades keep coming in. If you are an Apple or Android user, there are continuous updates which are going on to make sure that the user experience is good.

Proximity marketing

Today, the barrier which we had of physical stores is broken by e-commerce, but it is eventually very critical also to make sure proximity marketing is a critical aspect of technology. If a customer resides in Bengaluru, obviously the supply chain should also eventually hold that particular product it’s all about cost optimisation. Obviously, you need to know where is the customer residing proximity marketing becomes a core today in terms of the supply chain, in terms of marketing, in terms of even operations. Geo-location-based analytics is again about making sure, what exactly is your location and serving the right ads on to your location.

Beacon Analytics

Physical stores obviously are moving away and it has gone into beacon driven analytics, wherein if I enter the store I am asked to log in to or connect to a Wi-Fi or a Bluetooth and get served offers, which are there in the store, on my mobile as I move along. Those are beacon driven analytics. So, they will serve very crucial key offers and communication to you specifically by knowing which section exactly you are moving to. All this is possible only through drawing the consumer personas. Today, a lot of resource goes in to define what we call in the analytics or retail terms as single view of customer we decide who are those consumers, what does a particular consumer do, what does he/she prefer or purchase and so on.

Digital transformation

Usage of robotics in one of the Nike warehouses, which is about two lakh square feet in the US, is completely controlled by robots for dispatches. If an order comes, that robot will read that particular requirement, it will go to the particular shelf, pick that up and put it in a dispatch pack and then dispatch to the right location. So, that’s how the robotics have been helping the supply chain and a lot more is happening in digital transformation space and a lot more is happening in the Artificial Intelligence space also. But, one thing which we see is the effective use of AI and Machine Learning in increasing the customer lifetime value, which is directly related to retention. If a customer is with me, how do I make sure that customer stays with me for the next 4-5 years?

Careers in analytics

Today, Customer Analytics is an integral part of any marketing function. The skills that you need to evolve if you are very keen on joining marketing and analytics is critical thinking and problem solving, and developing business acumen, which is very important to know your business. Analytics is going to exist for a long time and there is definitely a career one could think of in the analytics space. Today, the Chief Analytics and Digital Officer are replacing the Chief Marketing Officer and have become more critical because the whole gamut of traditional marketing is moving to digital marketing. Obviously, you can start your career with Data Analytics or as a Statistician, Mathematician or Actuary, which are the four entry levels. From there you can become a Data Scientist and grow further to become a Data Science Manager, Chief Analytics Officer and Chief Insight Officer. So, that’s the kind of career path, if you are looking for getting into retail and analytics space. Obviously, Marketing has very close association with analytics and if you want to get into marketing, analytics again plays a very vital role in marketing on a day to day basis. In marketing, you generally start as a management trainee and then eventually grow up to become the Marketing Manager and then Regional and National Marketing Manager and to Chief Marketing Officer.