You’ve Got Data


You've got boatloads of customer data, but don't know how to use itYou heard the rally call to collect information about your customers. Through loyalty programs, purchase patterns, inventory and marketing efforts you have managed to gain volumes of data about your customers.

Now what?

What do you do with your data? Do you provide reports to your internal teams, tailored to their specific needs? Does marketing get reports on how their initiatives fared?

Chances are you have a set report that is sent out either daily or weekly providing your teams with the same high level view of sales and profits, and how it compares year over year, month over month.

All good information.

Develop quick snapshot dashboards of the data for your different stakeholders, and make them functional, to allow the departments to dig deeper into the data as they need to.But that’s an operational view only. Each of your teams should be able to see how the business is performing for their needs, so that they can prepare and respond.

Merchandising needs to know if there was a run on products, to track purchasing. Marketing needs to know what worked and what didn’t for their initiatives. Operations needs to know about shipping requirements and back-orders.

One-size-fits-all reporting isn’t enough. Use your data. Provide information that will not only show your teams what is happening, but provide the data in a way that it can be used to increase efficiencies in their work to make everyone happier and more money.

How?

Work with each department to review what data is collected. Each group should be able to communicate what information would help them do their jobs better, and then customized dashboards can be created.

What’s in YOUR data?

You collect all the data from the different user and customer interactions, now you need to leverage that data to take action and better serve your customerYour data has insights into who your customers are, how frequently they shop, and what they buy when. This helps plan inventory and resources better, but it also provides deeper insights into strategic planning. Marketing can delve into that data to see now only how their initiatives performed, but WHY they performed and what else they did.

Data can help identify new initiatives to serve customers better. It can also raise more questions, which will allow for new KPIs to be tracked and tested.

The Data Doesn’t Lie

Data doesn’t. It is what is it, as the saying goes. But you need to use it, interpret and understand what it can tell you. Data isn’t the end of the story, it’s only the beginning. You have to use the data so that you can improve your approaches and become more successful. Leverage the data that your customers are giving you to provide better customer interactions and develop a stronger relationship with them.