Strategic\Critical Decision-Making Dashboards – Retail Analytics
How does a Manager make the decisions to keep the Business growing? With Retail Analytics dashboards of live strategic decision-making information of what’s actually selling in your store!
Effective business responses to Lock-down require Live Data Dashboards to support critical daily decision making.
You need Data Analysis and Visualisation to make good decisions for business in a time of Covid 19.
Instant Retail Analytics is the answer.
Real time information helps retail managers face daily, item by item changes in shopping behaviour brought on by the Covid 19 Virus.
As the public responds to the lock-down measures their demands on their local retailers have changed. Emergency regulations imposed by the government have also changed the daily sales of different items drastically, especially non-essentials like cigarettes and alcohol. The agile stores will identify the right way forward by focusing on the true gold in this time of varying demand. According to a recent McKinsey Briefing Note, Gold is listening to and knowing the customers true and acute needs. Retail manager have to achieve this all while keeping their staff and customers safe.
How does a manager or owner best use the constrained resources available like staff, floor\shelf space and promotions? Information, information, information can be a close ally in these times, but can also become a trap. A wealth of figures all presented without context and relationship to one another can take precious time deciphering figures instead of making critical business decisions timeously. Data scientists talk of the difference of Data Analysis and Data Visualisation and at times like this we urgently need the second based on the correct questions. Data Analysis involves curiosity, posing questions, trolling through reams of data.
While Visualisation involves presenting the data in charts and dashboards so it can be used immediately. Which of those two do you have time for now? I’m sure you are eager to use Dashboards designed to answer your specific questions and to support your daily decisions you need to make (see Forbes article for more).
Retailers will have to use the information gathered each day from sales to place orders, re-organise the merchandising implement promotions, and coordinate staff. Once you have the information you then need to respond rapidly.
“Food retailers must take the time to listen to customers’ most acute needs, and then use those insights to both jury-rig solutions and define new ways to serve customers for the short and medium terms. For example, some retailers have had to flex space allocation radically to accommodate surges in demand (such as dedicating more store space to toilet paper and hand sanitizer)”–McKinsey
Retail Analytics Dashboards can inform and support management with planning decisions based on the information collected from the sales and inventory systems. That can help managers to focus on the right areas of the store to “make the Main thing the Main thing”. This is unbelievably useful and necessary in this time of varying demands. The customers’ acute needs during lock-down and the coming phased “opening the economy” may be something you don’t stock enough of.
Groceries and Household Essentials are the only Port of Call in this Storm
In ordinary times, any retailer would love to see a surge in demand, but this extraordinary time has strained the grocery industry almost to the breaking point.” – Forbes
Conclusion
How does a Retail Manager plan and execute in response to what the virus has led to the reduction in casual shopping, supply chain changes, regulation, merchandising requirements and customer stockpiling? The accurate, timely presentation of sales and inventory data in dashboards will prove to be a vital cog in all planning and business decision making. Having dashboards, chart present context and the relevant data points in one dashboard will enable managers to focus on the right departments and ensure the correct assortment of goods are on offer to meet their customers real and acute needs. This is true during lock-down and it will be true after it as well, good information, well presented will allow the opportunities to be identified and the business to see them act on them and thrive in the future.
