We’re about to see a shift in how retailers develop more effective merchandising and marketing strategies. This transformation won’t just better align internal teams on pricing, assortment, promotion and related decisions, but will also cut across company lines – positively affecting collaboration with manufacturer trading partners.
Underlying this shift is technology – applied appropriately, and tailored to the industry. Thanks to cues borrowed from consumer-facing social network services such as Facebook and LinkedIn, business planning software is rapidly becoming more social. Think richer context, better workflow, improved visibility, more user-friendly, to name a few of the attributes.
Here are four ways that social analytics will help transform how retailers plan business strategies:
1. Keep all stakeholders informed
Better visibility for the right stakeholders is invaluable. What the merchandising team is planning for the 2nd half has real implications not just on the marketing team, but also the finance team too. But keeping all stakeholders in the know can be a full-time job itself. Allowing your analytical systems to give all stakeholders instant, ongoing visibility through self-updating activity feeds can help your colleagues improve their own business decisions.
2. Avoid repeating last year’s mistakes
One of costliest merchandising planning sins is repeating what doesn’t work. So why is this happening? All the important context and post-event analysis from last year is buried in email threads and archived on hard drives. This essential historical context belongs in your planning applications – not tucked away in a folder.
The other benefit of keeping this context visible, is that more people can in turn help shape this year’s pricing or assortment decision. Think of the power of crowd sourcing applied to the retail analytical planning discipline.
3. Pivot faster as the market shifts
Making in-flight adjustments to a live promotion is altogether possible – if the tools are available and people are aligned to act. Social business context appearing alongside your master promotion calendar, and even individual promotion scenarios, can help facilitate this shift in execution. The window of opportunity is typically very narrow to adjust to an unexpected competitive presence, and every day (and hour) makes a difference between a margin-positive campaign and failure
4. Vastly improve trading partner collaboration
Successful merchandising plans can’t be developed in a vacuum. Beyond coordinating with internal peer teams, retailers are now embracing collaborative planning processes with their manufacturer trading partners. And they’re doing this with shared analytical systems that provide both trading partners with a common view of the analytics and underlying data. Applying social context to this shared platform keeps all parties in the know — as the coming holiday promotion calendar is updated, or as the category captain recommends a shelf reset, for example.
It’s easy to forget that business, especially in the retail sector, is all about people and relationships. While deeper social context will never replace a face-to-face merchandising planning meeting, it can be a powerful and transformative complement to your analytical planning systems.