Enterprise 2.0 for Retailers
For sure the above has given initial benefits to retailers – but incremental value may be difficult to come. In most instances integrity of PoS data presents a challenge to begin with. It is fraught with several inaccuracies and lacks intelligences on numerous events that impact sales at the store. In complex planning functions (e.g. assortment, space planning etc) the experts use heuristics learnt over several years of experience that are difficult to codify in decision systems
Stores Story Bank: Store personnel can be encouraged to blog on their experiences at the store. Over a period of time these blogs will become rich source of information and learnings about what is happening at the store. Unstructured Data Analysis (UDA) techniques can be used to easily to extract insights which can help decision making at the corporate.
Category Wikis: Wikis present an opportunity to capture the experiential knowledge of category management personnel. These wikis can be used for multiple purposes e.g. best practice sharing, inducting new personnel. Support organizations like IT can refer to these for proactively building solutions to support the category organization.
To overcome the challenges highlighted above, Enterprise 2.0 may present an opportunity. Tools like wikis and blogs can provide a very simple (and accessible) platform to share and collaborate on information / knowledge across stores and corporate. This is the kind of the information that cannot be read from data captured across the retail environment. Some ideas to consider:
Stores Story Bank: Store personnel can be encouraged to blog on their experiences at the store. Over a period of time these blogs will become rich source of information and learnings about what is happening at the store. Unstructured Data Analysis (UDA) techniques can be used to easily to extract insights which can help decision making at the corporate.
Category Wikis: Wikis present an opportunity to capture the experiential knowledge of category management personnel. These wikis can be used for multiple purposes e.g. best practice sharing, inducting new personnel. Support organizations like IT can refer to these for proactively building solutions to support the category organization.
The above are just a couple ideas from the vast potential of Enterprise 2.0 presents. Given the pace of Enterprise 2.0 adoption across organizations, its time for retailers to re-assess their current IT investments. Should money continue to be invested in building newer capabilities on data-driven systems OR should we channelize funds in building web 2.0 capabilities which can help capture the collective experience of the organization? Can Enterprise 2.0 be used to combine structured data (e.g. PoS) with unstructured knowledge (Blogs, Wikis) for better decision making? Will this help factor grass root level information from the stores in all decision making? If bogging, wikis and other online social networking means are becoming our way of life at home then why not the same at work?
