Big decisions need better analytics for happier holidays

17 December 2014

Big decisions need better analytics for a happier holiday and new year

Showrooming and mobile search. Digital cross-sell. Omnichannel integration. In the lead up to Christmas, are retailers making the most of the silly season?

“It seems businesses can no longer rely on historical shopping behaviours as consumers increasingly expect a more personalised, digital experience,” says PwC Director Greg Doone, a Digital Strategy and Data specialist.

“Not only is it not good enough to make decisions based on intuition alone, but there’s no time for indecisiveness. Big decisions change strategy and the long-term course for businesses, and retailers need to make practical use of data in order to make speedy and sophisticated big decisions for competitive advantage.

“It is promising to see that change in decision-making practices is starting to happen,” says Mr Doone.

According to PwC’s global report Gut & gigabytes: Capitalising on the art & science in decision making, 66 per cent of retail executives have changed the way they’ve approached big decision-making as a result of big data or analytics in the last two years, yet 44 per cent say that the quality, accuracy or completeness of data they have to work with isn’t high enough.

"In a world of overwhelming inputs, it's a skill to learn what not to react to. From what we're seeing in the market, New Zealand's retailers are behind global counterparts. Imperfection isn't always bad but retailers can gain new insights from incomplete or imperfect data, provided they are triangulated with other information. The survey findings affirm a balanced approach to using data and analytics to business-defining decisions," says Mr Doone.

Looking ahead to the next year, 41 per cent of retailers say they are fully prepared and 54 per cent are somewhat prepared to make the most important decision they’ll need to make. 32 per cent say that their most important decision will be based on a new opportunity they simply can’t ignore, 44 per cent expect to make at least one big decision a month and 56 per cent plan to revisit their most important decision within 3-6 months to adjust for new information.

Corporate restructuring, collaborating with competitors and entering a new industry or starting a business are the top three goals among retail executives in the year ahead.

To view our publication, please see: Retailer's big decisions need better analytics

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ENDS

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