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In Part 3 of my blog series on uses of shopper insights, I discussed the top initiatives retailers are driving using shopper data, as well as the missed opportunities.
In this blog, I’ll focus on the major organizational and technological barriers preventing more pervasive use of shopper insights.
The survey results were in line with other industry research on the subject. The most common roadblocks to wider usage of shopper insights in retail are related to organizational challenges like the unavailability of the right skillset, limited IT personnel and inter-departmental rivalries and fiefdoms.
In fact, at 57 percent, a shortage of people with analytical expertise to derive insights from the data topped the organizational barrier list, closely followed by limited/ overextended IT personnel preventing timely insights at 45 percent.
On the technology front, respondents listed inadequacies of the IT infrastructures in working with large and diverse forms of data, and the inability to convert unstructured data into an analyzable form for timely and actionable insights. However, the most notable selection was the complexity of existing tools (at 37 percent)which make deriving insights difficult for people without a substantive technical background—pointing once again to a skill shortage.
One good piece of news seen from the survey was that despite all the talk about lack of analytical culture in retail, things seem to be definitely changing. Of all the respondents, a relative few, only 22 percent felt that management was agnostic to the importance or need for shopper insights. The rest of the respondents, at 78 percent, agreed that management was aware and supportive of the importance of shopper data driven decision-making. On the IT front as well, only 12 percent reported resistance from IT management when it came to getting access to shopper insights.
In conclusion, I think that the survey results are clearly indicating a changing retail mindset— a drive towards a more analytical approach in all ranks of the organization. Challenges such as limited analytical resources exist in all industries, and will continue to persist –we simply cannot produce as many data scientists as the industry needs in a reasonable time.
The answer, in my opinion, lies in one of the challenges highlighted by survey respondents around the “complexity of existing tools”. The need is to look beyond tools that require specialized programming skills or extensive IT support for implementation and integration. Today’s organizations need to move towards intuitive analytical tools that provide its line-of-business analysts the power to perform complex data blending, analyses, and reporting tasks - all in one single workflow without any need for coding or IT dependence.
In my next blog I’ll cover some of the most interesting findings from the survey – factors that most attribute to positive ROI from shopper insights initiatives. So keep reading, and if you like what you have read so far, do share with your colleagues and other interested parties!
A full list of other blogs in this series is as follows:
Retail Shopper Insights Blog Series: An Insider’s Perspective
- The State of Use of Shopper Insights: Retail Analytics Blog Series Introduction
- Shopper Data Matters – But All is Not Equal!
- Top Uses of Shopper Insights – And Missed Opportunities!
- Roadblocks to Usage of Shopper Insights
- Shopper Insights to ROI – Factors that connect!
- Recommendations: Making Your Shopper Insights Initiatives Count!
