DEEPENING CUSTOMER INSIGHTS HAS NEVER BEEN MORE VALUABLE
Letizia2020-07-24T09:16:56+02:00The global retail industry is experiencing an unparalleled crisis amid Covid-19. Consumers are staying home and reducing their spending while they face uncertainties linked to their health, wealth, and jobs. As a result, retailers are laying off staff and struggling to understand their options. They will have to restart and survive in a challenging market. How can leaders minimize losses and find opportunities in the current scenario? With such an unpredictable market, leaders should avoid making decisions based on pre-COVID-19 data and realize that existing dashboards are not of great help. In parallel, leaders should develop analytical models and tools centered on emerging behavior patterns. Finally, while data infrastructure and new technologies are addressable with reasonable investments, the scarcest ingredient for the effective use of analytics is managers’ understanding of what is possible. Data, hardware, and software are available in droves, but human comprehension of the possibilities they enable is much less common. Given that problem, there is a great need for more education aiming at promoting analytical thinking to compete on analytics.