Retail's information distribution problem.

Retail is one of the most data-rich sectors out there, yet the promise of turning that into productivity has often fallen short. It’s not because retailers don’t have the ability to generate great insights, it’s because they have a distribution problem. Here’s three ways to fix that:

The problem:

The Head of Data and Analytics was walking me through their high velocity analysis. It was super smart. They had built an effective model to predict the likely availability issues in store, which triggers field teams to go investigate. 

I’ve seen similar things being done with inventory cameras, but this was the same issue that we were seeing elsewhere. Early on, they saw good results but it was not replicable across the rest of the business.

A quick visit to just one store and a conversation with the store manager, we could immediately deduce the issue. 

“How often do you look at the high velocity analysis? 

“Oh I definitely should but it’s one of 2,000 reports I have access to, and last week I was focused on solving my staffing issues.”

The distribution issue in retail and how to fix it

The analysis that the Head of Analytics had done provided super valuable information, but it only leads to business value if action is taken on it. Retail has overwhelmed itself with information and communications being sent out to the field, which has led to a lack of efficacy.

So like any information it needs to follow the three principles of effective communication.

It needs to be relevant

In a fast-paced world where there are more things to do than hours in a day. Being relevant consists of two things:

1. Be focused – ask people to do 30 things they will do none, ask them to do 2-3 they will do all of them. To focus information, retail needs to simplify and personalize what is being sent out to teams to execute only what is truly important. 
2. Be valuable – money talks. Knowing that doing an activity will help someone hit their bonus speaks volumes. A recent example for us at Quorso was when a DM suddenly understood their faulty freezer was losing them $2k/wk in sales. It’s amazing how quickly it then got fixed.

It needs to be actionable

In marketing there is a term called “Call To Action,” the objective of an entire piece is the action you want someone to take off the back of it.

Just sending out a report doesn’t have a call to action other than “please consume this information.” Building effective workflows and clear CTAs is essential to help action be taken.    

It needs to be reinforced

Lastly, people need to know that their actions are effective rather than just mere pencil-whipping. Showing people the impact of their actions is essential to reinforcing why they’ll continue trusting a communication, otherwise it gets stale.

If you think you have a distribution problem, I’d be happy to talk you through ways we’ve helped fix that at over 40k retail stores.

Email me at julianmills@quorso.com and we’ll set up a call.

P.S. How was that for a CTA?