Traditionally, the retail industry has lagged behind other industries in adopting new technologies, and this holds true in its acceptance of BI technology. Some industries, such as financial services, have become very sophisticated in using BI software for financial reporting and consolidation, customer analysis. However, retailers are quickly catching up and beginning to recognize the many areas of Technology/BI that can be applied specifically to their businesses.
As the industry continues to consolidate, retailers have begun to realize that using technology to better understand customer buying behavior, to drive sales and profitability, and to reduce operational costs is a necessity for long-term survival. As part of the long term survival they initiated re engineering the transaction process to overcome the current business challenges.
In my view i have listed few of the retail sector challenges towards growth story :
Price Evaluation towards customer
Shelf Availability
Logistic parameter
Labor optimization
Implementing promotion sales program
There are many factors that have led retailers to adopt/re engineering the technology system/BI.
But, the gathering and analysis of business intelligence is not as easy as it may seem. The retail industry is awash in best of breed, enterprise systems to manage everything from point of sale (POS) to resource allocation, inventory, financial results, sales and marketing campaigns, pricing, reward program and more. If the retailer is to remain competitive, business users must have access to the most complete information with full insight into results and the ability for following factors:
Understanding
Evaluation
Control
Prediction
First factor “understanding” describes the the elaboration of data which business users retrieved from system.
“evaluation” done with reporting process.
“Control” done with analysis.
“prediction” done with visulisation to support/enhance the business performance towards long term run.
