The Search for Retail Intelligence
By
Naresh Ramamurti
Practice Leader - SAP RETAIL
Customer Centricity and Cross-Channel shopping have been the two greatest trends in RETAIL since 2010. With Apple and Google taking the world's number 1 and 2 spots for global brands this year, these trends have taken a whole new meaning. On the foundation of tomorrow's mobile applications, customers have dynamited the way they interact with retailers - redefining and rewriting the shopper experience from product to point of sale. While organizations around the world continue to grapple with the challenges of reducing their cost of business, Retailers have an exceptional opportunity to take control of the shopping experience - from embracing social networks to crunching core analytics in real time.
Less than a year ago, business intelligence in RETAIL was largely confined to the two dimensional analysis of operational and strategic data - from various sources - more often than not, "long after" the event trigger had fired. Given the velocity with which customers have taken to mobility, and the resulting cross-channel shopping patterns, the return on investment in traditional predictive analytics, while still significant, is no longer sufficient.
Imagine yourself in the intelligence cockpit of a fashion apparel manufacturer and retailer - here's a sampling of what you might expect on any given Sunday
- One of your competitors has dropped prices on your best-selling product by a ridiculous percentage (how'd they do that, you wonder!)
- A barrage of posts (is that what they call them?), about your brand have popped up on Facebook in the last half hour
- Another announcement of increasing fuel prices (not again!) will invariably impact your cost of doing business -
- A valuable customer just binged into your marquee website (come in spinner!)
- On-hand inventory for your top-selling merchandise is rapidly dwindling (time for a refill!)
On the face of it, these appear to be disparate, disconnected events - but
analyzing this information, and more importantly, analyzing it in "real time" can
give Retailers an opportunity to make better decisions faster - based on
instant intuitive access to relevant information.
SAP's In-Memory Appliance (HANA) is a platform that offers exactly that - ability to mine (in real time) structured and unstructured data that is captured on a constant basis - from websites, to social networks, to the core ERP and the store POS. Manipulating these large quantities of data "in memory" represents a quantum leap in processing speed, flexibility and the cost of analytics as we know it.
Clearly, HANA appears to be taking the path of coexistence with conventional data warehouses - that will continue to house predictive analytics with pre-defined cubes and dynamic queries. This combination of offerings provides an unprecedented opportunity for Retailers to combine high volume transactions with analytics to dramatically improve planning, forecasting and real time pricing.
Infosys is a Sapphire level sponsor of the upcoming SAPPHIRE NOW at Orlando. Infosys and SAP have worked on a HANA pilot, please come to our booth 2702 to witness its potential.
Infosys is also presenting 5 sessions and 2 microforums jointly with our clients, for more details, please visit the below link for more detailshttp://www.infosys.com/SAP/news-events/Pages/sapphire-orlando-11.aspx
About Naresh: Naresh has over 17 years of experience in Information Technology and Consulting. His primary area of focus has been on helping customers better manage their IT
investments to meet their business objectives. Naresh has an established track record of incubating centers of excellence - focusing on ERP (SAP and Oracle) in the
Retail, CPG and Financial Services industries, in North America, China and Australia.
Prior to Infosys, Naresh was Senior Principal with Oracle Consulting where he spent 9 years. He has a Bachelor's degree in Engineering and a post graduate degree
in Computer Science from the University of Illinois."
