With the expansion of the Internet, the importance of business data is continuously increasing in the retail & consumer goods space. Data integration software solutions in retail and consumer goods leverage data from different commercial channels to help today’s retailers—online and physical—gain accurate, comprehensive, and valuable insights into their business operations and create greater economic efficiency as well as enhance consumer experience.
Data integration across online and offline retail channels helps retailers to create a seamless brand experience for their customers. With the right big data technologies, unified data profiles can be created for each customer in order to offer shopping experiences that focus on them. These technologies will also help retailers focus on target customers and provide them with accurate messages that reach smaller, more precise groups. Customers will benefit through tailored advertisements and more relevant products & services.
Scope of Data Integration
To reach out to customers, many businesses create an online presence alongside their physical stores. For large enterprises with a hybrid presence, online and offline platforms must provide a consistent customer experience to address all customer demands efficiently. To achieve this goal, data integration solutions can be used to process data generated through online shopping, mobile apps, QR code scanners, coupons, and offline store inquiries. Data collected from various sources is analyzed in order to make predictions and present insights and suggestions to retailers. Personalized experiences, products, and services help increase customer loyalty by promptly providing whatever the consumer desires, wherever and whenever it is desired.
Traditional inventory deployment strategies cannot easily store and process data collected from retail channels. Using data integration and data application solutions, retailers can obtain an accurate overview of their inventory by using real-time internal data. Integrated data also helps check the actual, real-time performance of all sales channels to better predict supply and demand. Other benefits include accurate planning and distribution of inventory resources through multiple channels as well as improved inventory management.
Data integration helps retailers to address the following business challenges:
- Emergence of the ‘New Age Customer’
- Complex buying behaviors
- Lack of consistent KPI definitions and real-time trend alerts
- Lack of real-time awareness of customer sentiments
- Delay in the dissemination of information through the value chain
- Inability to provide loyal customers with special incentives as they shop
- Poor visibility of supply chain leading to losses
The retail & consumer goods space is using data integration to quantify brand awareness and understand the way customers shop across channels in order to make advanced arrangements for the development of inventory. In cross-channel retail, the ability to adapt to customers’ needs is heavily dependent on the retailer’s ability to extract data from all channels, integrate it, and understand the insights it presents. Today, retailers can track online consumer behavior with the help of advanced technology and analyze the data collected to develop more relevant goods and services.
Benefits Of Data Integration
Following are the benefits of data integration in the retail sector:
- Enables retailers to swiftly make necessary changes in tastes, packaging, quantity, etc. as per customer demands
- Provides a central window for control and evaluation of digital marketing and multi-channel marketing campaigns
- Quickens the analysis of customer feedback using big data tools
- Helps create more targeted marketing campaigns
- Simplifies the process of increasing customer loyalty
- Creates segments of target groups for target group-specific activities, such as designing newsletters
Takeaway
In today’s connected era, digitalized processes for the consumer goods industry promotes agility and customer-proximity in-store as well as online. Differentiated and personalized offerings through click and connect models have revolutionized the retailing experience. It is very important for retailers to integrate data from across channels, secure their online and offline data across different databases, and build more accurate customer profiles. Since customer preferences keep changing, manufacturers also need to observe retail customers in order to stay on top of market trends and offer them the products that they desire. Data integration solutions help all stakeholders in the retail industry take care of these needs swiftly and easily.
