This has fundamentally changed in the past fifteen years and the turning point was the rise of social media channels and then the technology introduction of smartphones, which allowed us all to keep up to date with what is going on in every step of our lives.
Today we are showing signs of being occupied with our health and fitness. Fitbit.com located out of California have already sold over 60 million devices since their launch ten years ago and there are similar numbers being reported from other fitness trackers. Today, the IDC are forecasting the wearables market will nearly double in the next four years – reaching 222.3 million units.
So, we clearly have moved on a generation and now want to know how to improve our lives based upon information that is available to us.Which leads me on to talk about the retail, an industry I have been actively involved in for the past 30 years of my career.
Retail is one of the most competitive industries in the world by being incredibly responsive to the consumer, moving quickly, and being at the cutting edge of developing new technology. It is this reason why as consumers, we now have it very easy to order and purchase items faster than ever before.
Retail has also been at the forefront of business intelligence with many innovative iterations of software technology enabling information to be put into the hands of head office, store, and supplier colleagues. No better than the example from one of the leading builders merchant in the UK, Travis Perkins, who now share supplier sales data with their 3,000 suppliers via a mobile tablet device.
However, when it comes to the retail analytics economy, the next wave of data transformation will be firmly positioned in front of the customer. Customers that are loyal to certain retail brands should be able to analyse their historical purchasing habits. This will in turn enable customers to learn how they can adjust their behaviour to improve their overall spend and value they get from the retailer; whether this is cost saving for themselves, or analysing better health choices from the grocery foods purchased. It’s possible now, look at the embedded analytics capability which provides an open and extensible platform that lets you embed best-in-class analytics in any context, securely, and at massive scale. The result being the opportunity to increase the value of your customer relationships.
This article was written by Paul Winsor and originally appeared here: https://blog.qlik.com/empowering-your-retail-customers-to-make-smarter-choices