Market research and insight expert, Andrew Mitchell examines how retailers are increasingly looking at how to drive further sales and profits from existing markets, while using their experience and knowledge to drive into new, emerging markets
Market research and insight expert, Andrew Mitchell examines how retailers are increasingly looking at how to drive further sales and profits from existing markets, while using their experience and knowledge to drive into new, emerging markets
As retailers struggle with the current economic climate, dramatically changing consumer dynamics and stagnation within their core markets, the benefits to be gained from understanding consumer needs and customer trends on a global basis are increasingly apparent. That’s according to Andrew Mitchell, international director of Symphony IRI Group.
Gaining global visibility
“To reap the benefits of global operation while maintaining local customer centricity, retailers need to be able to cross reference and compare performance across regions, countries, categories and suppliers to identify trends and opportunities within the global business infrastructure,” he said.
“Having a global business strategy in this way enables faster and more effective decision making, which, in turn brings competitive advantage. A global view of performance also allows for a greater understanding of the competitive environment and provides retailers with the ability to prioritise strategic investments to markets where they can drive the most return on investment.
“However many of the processes that support these global strategies emerged or were defined prior to having the appropriate tools and systems to support them, and many decisions of this type are based on data that has been put together manually.”
Mitchell said this is clearly not sustainable in the long term, particularly as the importance and value associated with these decisions is increasing at a rapid pace. “Having an up-to-the minute ‘360-degree’ view of global sales, marketing, distribution and operations, for example, will help retailers to define brand, sales and marketing strategies globally that achieve maximum local impact.”
Overcoming business challenges
Creating a global insights platform however, that includes all the relevant data, including market and consumer data, in order to facilitate such a global organisational model is a challenge that many retailers have yet to overcome.
When considering how to approach such a global insights platform, Mitchell highlighted that there are typically four levels of decision making maturity – local operating model, decentralised operating model, centralised operating model and globally advantaged model.
“Although many retailers are moving rapidly towards a global organisational model, their decision making solutions and processes are not developing at the same pace,” he added. “As a result, they are unable to leverage local data as well as they would wish in order to gain global perspective.”
Mitchell said there are many challenges when it comes to putting in place an effective global information platform that can support faster and fact based decision making. These include:
- Business value and business process – the investment required to deploy a global information platform can be significant.
- Business scope and requirements – an early challenge will be to define key objectives, business requirements and scope of the platform.
- Technical - the processes of aligning and integrating information across many markets, all with different information sources, metrics, definitions, language, currencies, frequencies and requirements, is challenging.
- Change management – clear global governance, senior sponsorship, clear definition of business processes, training and a continuous insight resource model are fundamental to its success.
Sweating information assets
“With the right information, retailers can support global sales and marketing decisions that align with key business processes and goals and set key milestones to move to a higher level of global operation,” he continued.
Providing this type of information to retailers requires three key technology elements:
- Data integration and management solutions and processes
- Multi-dimensional modelling tools
- Flexible and scalable user interfaces
“Global business strategies enable faster and more effective decision making, which retailers use to grow their businesses at a faster rate, respond to opportunities faster and understand their customers in more detail so that they can achieve global operational and strategic competitive advantages,” he concluded. “With so many of the key processes not driven globally today, retailers need a framework to guide them through the potentially daunting task of creating a business case for a global sales and marketing insights platform.”
