How BI Analytics tools can help retailers to understand customers better
What is Business Intelligence (BI) and how did it emerge?
The term “Business Intelligence” was first used in 1865 by Richard Millar Devens in the Cyclopedia of Commercial Business Anecdotes. The term referred to the practice of gathering information to help make decisions. In 1958, Hans Peter Luhn, a scientist at IBM, wrote an article that helped popularize the term. By the 1980s, data science was becoming popular, and data mining companies were growing rapidly.
Business Intelligence is a broad term for all those activities that help an enterprise to make better and faster decisions based on the information they have in their possession. The information is available in various forms and must be integrated in order to get the right picture of your customer, competition, products and services.
Why is Business Intelligence important in the Retail Sector?
Business Intelligence to Retailers is what photosynthesis is for plants. Fetching data, segregating it, getting actual insights and using those insights to make fruitful changes in your business can do wonders beyond your imagination.
It helps to get a deeper understanding of your customers.
Following are some ways in which BI helps retailers understand their customers better:
-In the world of business where everything is numbers and data, nothing aids more in bringing in a clearer picture of your customers’ likes and dislikes than BI Tools. Business Intelligence tools help make visual representations of data and ultimately provide clarity about what offers, products, categories, etc. are customers more drawn to.
-Tracking one’s own data and retail leaflet promotions and comparing it with one’s competitors’ data and promotions makes it possible for a retail business owner to spot new opportunities and inefficiencies within the current model that might not be working with the customers. It also empowers business owners and runners by providing them with the leverage of having a bird’s eye view in their respective organizations and businesses.
-The ultimate goal of a business is to maximize profits. Having access to the right tools can help tap into the right information at the right time. This can lead to boosting customer satisfaction by providing what the customers need and increasing sales and footfall. A deeper understanding of customer behavior gives business owners an upper hand in running the business by making well-informed decisions.
-Business Intelligence tools don’t just give a crystal clear picture of the past and the present, but also help analyze and predict business and customer trends for the future. Predicting trends can help businesses be prepared for what’s to come and make plans accordingly.
Organizing, optimizing and utilizing this data for maximum benefits is only made possible with the help of Retail Analytics Solutions. More than 50% of the organizations world-wide have adapted to data driven decision making. In this digital revolution, data is everything and understanding how to use it to optimize customer satisfaction can help you retail business grow tremendously.
