Retail and Consumer Goods Analytics Study 2018: May the Best Insights Win
Hare Today, or Gone Tomorrow
To download the full study, click on the attachment at the bottom of the article.
I recently spoke with an executive at a consumer goods startup who explained his company’s strategy for market expansion: Check Google Analytics to find heavy clusters of website visits. Meeting over. Decision made. Another victory for the digital economy.
Whether so cavalier a decision will ever qualify as sound business strategy is certainly up for debate. A company making such relatively impulsive moves might not be around very long. Besides, it’s pretty easy to make such flip assessments when, aside from your products and your people, your company assets are virtually all, well, virtual. This company simply conducts some research into regional commerce regulations (uh, maybe), launches a local-language version of its website (if necessary) and hires a regional sales rep or two to work from their homes. Established companies need to build out a little more infrastructure, and therefore require a bit more due diligence.
Nonetheless, I couldn’t help thinking about that company as I examined the results of this year’s Retail and Consumer Goods Analytics Study. Over the last three years, sister publications CGT and RIS have joined forces for this annual check on the analytics “maturity” level on both sides of the industry.
Over those three years, the industry has certainly improved maturity-wise, with many CGs and retailers moving up the ladder to more sophisticated, more actionable and more accurate analytics capabilities. In fact, the measurement scale itself has improved, with the “no formal analytics” base we started with in 2016 falling off and the ultimate end-game moving up from “predictive” to “prescriptive.”
Yet despite what now is universal agreement that enterprise-wide analytics excellence is critically important to future success, and despite the fact that many of the tools needed to deliver that level of business intelligence are now available, a lot of companies still seem to be moving a little too slowly up the ladder.
In fact, as report author Lisa Terry notes, many companies still feel they have “a long way to go” before achieving internal data alignment. In this market, however, slow and steady is probably not going to win the race. Not when so many emerging companies are inherently farther along on the analytics journey than most traditional players. Not when a Stitch Fix can come along, identify a largely unmet consumer need (curated apparel shopping), and leverage a proprietary analytics platform to become a billion-dollar company in less than seven years. Not when Amazon — considered by many to be the analytics bellwether — keeps upping the ante every few months. Not when there are smaller competitors entering markets based on Google Analytics alone.
That’s something to keep in mind as you read through this year’s report and benchmark your own progress against the industry as a whole. Are you one of the roughly one-fifth of respondents that have already gained internal data alignment? Are you among the minority of companies that have gotten to the prescriptive analytics level for some business functions? Pat yourselves on the back. You deserve it.
But whether you deem yourself woefully behind the industry or even feel like you’re well ahead of the game, there’s a good chance your rate of progress is still a little too slow. Because in this race, even the most effective, efficient tortoise is going to spend way too much time in its shell. These days, the hares have the advantage.
CGT and RIS would like to thank the support we've received from title sponsor SAS, along with AFS Technologies, Cierant, Clarkston Consulting, E2Open, Mareana and T-Pro Solutions.
Peter Breen, Editor-in-Chief, CGT
To read the study, click on the links below:
Overview: Analytics Maturity Is a Moving Target
Retailers: Wielding Analytics in the Battle for Customers
Consumer Goods: Sharpening the Analytics Toolset
To download the full study, click on the attachment below.