Big Data And Collaboration

Retailer collaboration practices with consumers has usually been focused at the personal, and in person, level through the employee interaction with their customers.  This must change with the changes introduced by the omni market and the explosion of the social network aspect and capabilities and especially the embrace of this technology from by consumers.  These demands can be especially difficult if the retailer attempts these efforts without a means to analyze the reactions and the interactions with the consumer. This is where the big data practices and capabilities come into play and these capabilities can be utilized to provide the consumer reactions that were captured in the past from the personal and direct one on one interactions with consumers.  Big data can be utilized to produce the analytics and provide the means to explore consumer reactions through their direct reaction and interactions with the omni market technologies.

This is a coming together of technologies and interactions between consumers and the retail marketplace.   These technologies have exploded in the marketplace with new capabilities and interactions on a daily basis, it seems, and the retail marketplace has been incorporating much of these technologies as a result of consumer direction and demands.  The difficulty for retailers lies in their abilities to incorporate these capabilities into their procedures and practices which requires a robust and flexible framework to support the required integrations and interactions. However the benefits can be priceless for these consumers because of the data these technologies and consumer interactions can produce.

Technology improvements has produced the tools and the foundational hardware to support the collection of huge amounts of data to quickly and efficiently analyze the data to answer the questions that will support direct consumer collaboration.  As a result of the advances hardware technologies the big data capabilities can now support the amounts of data collection required to analyze consumer shopping and purchasing practices in the retail omni marketplace. The challenge now for retailers is to understand and embrace the capabilities, while at the same time incorporating new technologies and capabilities to support consumer shopping demands in the retail omni market.  

This is the single greatest challenge for retailers now and probably the single greatest opportunity to support their collaboration efforts with consumers.  The retail omni market produces huge amounts of data based on the consumer direct interaction with the technology and the omni market practices and capabilities of wireless technologies provide the means to support seamless interaction across all channels, also producing huge amounts of data.  All of this data availability will do no good for the retailer without big data technologies and this technology requires expertise and imagination to analyze the data.

These are challenging times for many of the large legacy retailers because of the velocity of change demanded by consumers and the retail omni market.  Layer on top of this the requirement to understand and then plan for changes and the challenge can become almost overwhelming. Big data technologies and analytics will add to this complexity and challenge on the one hand and then on the other hand these technologies will provide the knowledge based on factual data collections to help the retailer succeed and navigate the demands from the market.

Retail Supply Chain Analytics

The retail omni market provides a basis and opportunity to collect vast amounts of data from a range of data points to support the types of analytics required to understand and adapt to the changing marketplace.  The omni market really provides methods to collect data points from all aspects of the customer experience that can then be used to develop customer relationship and also programs, product and services to meet the consumer demands in the marketplace. The omni market really provides a remarkable opportunity for the retailer and all of their partners in the market, including the end customer to increase collaboration opportunities and most importantly build the relationships that will help the retailer and their partners to succeed.

All of the pieces and parts have been coming together over the years now to provide the framework and infrastructure to collect and store along with the horsepower to process the vast amounts of data required to perform the analytics to understand and make decisions to drive the business.  The technology is really coming into a maturity that can provide tremendous value, if the retailer in this case is imaginative and also skilled in analytics. As the technology advances there is more and more opportunity to grow and expand expertise based on your desire and imagination.

The challenge in the retail omni market now is not the technology, it is what should be collected and how should it be analyzed.  There is now more than ever before a level of data available to the retailer that can support analytics of the shopping and purchasing process that could never have been achieved in the past.  The omni market provides the opportunity and the collection points that would allow the retailer, and their partners, to achieve a level of understanding of the consumer habits that would allow the retailer to develop the methods to truly customize the shopping and purchasing experience based on the demands of the consumer.

Retailers have focused on the operational processes and capabilities to support consumer purchasing demands based on the marketplace, in other words the offerings to consumers have been based on the offerings of competitors and focused on sales and operational efficiencies.  The analytics now available to the retailer will allow them to develop relationships with consumers and extend the relationships of their partners into the customer experience area to focus on the reasons why consumers shop and purchase from the retailer. Retailers cannot afford to follow the leaders the market because the market is changing to quickly and the analytics allows the retailers to identify trends and demands earlier than in the past.

The challenge now for retailers is to embrace the tools and capabilities that will allow them to detect the trends and direction early.  This means a framework that collects the data for analysis and even more importantly provides a feedback framework to support the change implementation.  This is another tool or practice in the continuous change framework that can easily be utilized to support and deliver the success of the consumer. Now is the time though to start because this framework requires investment in both technology and skills to support the retail market demands.

Direct To Consumer Delivery Challenge

Consumer delivery, or last mile delivery, is a challenge from two directions; the initial delivery to the consumer and then the reverse logistics for returns from the consumer, to provide cost effective and delivery options to meet the consumers needs at the time of purchase.  These are both logistical and service related and there is simply no easy ‘one size fits all’ solution. The solution depends on the product and consumer, or market, expectations and in addition to the variances the expectations and demands are continuously changing from both expectations and capabilities.  The challenge for both retailer and carrier is keeping up with the velocity of demands from all players in the market and maintaining a rate of change that keeps up with the rate of the demands.

The demands and capabilities have changed dramatically over the last few years and the last mile carriers, especially such as FedEx and UPS, have been really brought their best offerings and ideas to play in order to maintain both market share and also service demands of the consumers.  These carriers have really felt the brunt of the consumer demands, really they are second only to the retailers, and these carriers have been creative and invested in technology and operations to improve service and increase transparency in the last mile services. I see a strength in these offerings because of the potential flexibility of the tools to easily shift to multi function capabilities through new technology offerings.  This is an area where truly only the imagination of the service provider and the consumer of the services limits the types of offerings.

The last mile delivery and then the reverse logistics services really require a type of  hand in glove relationship with both retailers and the consumer to coordinate both the start and the finish of the service.  You can see the example of the social network at work in these relationships and connections when you diagram the connection from the retailer to the consumer and they the retailer to the carrier and then the carrier to the consumer.  Each of these relationships and connections are first level connection and requires a means of two way communications to support the relationship and collaborate between the connections. In this model consumers have the opportunity to connect directly to each of the participants in the retail market and the transaction at hand.  

This transactional connection must be leveraged to create a relationship in order to encourage the partner to return.  In this model every participant is a consumer with the other participant and this requires and increased level of participation from all parties involved.  Like so many other retail activities the market is driven in a large extent by the imagination, consumer collaboration and size of Amazon. You see this in almost every interaction in the retail marketplace, from the first contact of the consumer to the last contact by the delivery and then the potential return or reverse logistics.  Retailers must encourage the relationship with all partners in order to ensure their success and this requires a commitment to the consumer relationship and meeting and exceeding consumer demands.