Big Data is at the peak of demand among businesses right now. This is because the analysis of incoming information is able to provide meaningful conclusions and help the retailer and consumer move in the same direction. Thanks to the use of machine learning and data mining, the results obtained can open up interesting patterns for saving resources, optimizing business processes, etc.
You can repeat as many times as you like that data analysis is very important for business, but let’s consider the real benefits for retailers in various industries (from services to products). By studying financial transactions, you can determine the most relevant cost of services, and statistics will open your eyes to whether you need to lower the price tag or can safely raise it. In addition to the exchange rate and stock market indices, a business must also take into account the real needs and interests of the client. For example, data from fiscal checks can form an understanding of the most successful time slices for making purchases, the average check and the mechanics of selecting products. The fact that financial transactions are being gradually digitized speaks first of all about the need for a business to see its real offline clients.
Digital receipts combine the two opposite approaches, offline and online, into a single whole. Conveniently, by using cookies in each digital check, you can automatically collect anonymized data about offline purchases. In this way, you can create a holistic profile of a real consumer who is interested in your product, compare relevant needs and interests with behavior on the Internet. You can use this set of information, e.g., to customize targeted advertising. Are there tangible results? Tests show an increase in sales of up to 40% for companies that use digital receipts. These statistics can finally take business loyalty systems to a new level because simple promotions and discounts do not have the same ratio of interaction.
Digital receipts as a data source outperform any CRM system in their functionality. A standard CRM service today can only store purchases and contacts of loyal customers, record customer interactions and serve as a task manager for an employee. At the same time, the service of digital receipts, driven by artificial intelligence, opens up new possibilities: identification of offline clients online, collecting information about interests on the internet (involvement, sites, devices, etc.), combining offline and online data into a single consumer profile, segmentation and clustering of audiences for effective marketing.
Knowing the needs of people, understanding what they really want to buy, what they are interested in, you can determine the key areas of development for a company. If consumers are only interested in umbrellas today, then it would be a good idea to minimize the costs of producing raincoats and prioritize umbrellas. The next important advantage of the availability of information is the ability to make forecasts, to keep several steps ahead. Before opening a new coffee shop, the world-famous chain Starbucks conducts its own analysis on several metrics: location, traffic, consumer behavior, and demographic indicators. Insights from 90 million transactions per week go through a very clear data analysis and are used in brand logistics.
Oil prices, weather conditions, presidential elections – all this can affect the consumer behavior of people. We live in a world of information, so we need to analyze it correctly and understand our own resources. Unfortunately, good qualified personnel in Data Science are still a rarity. Profiled big analytics should be ordered from companies that have the appropriate professional teams with the necessary experience in processing big data.
