Being data-centric is, and has been for many years, a priority for nearly all companies. Understanding the company’s customers, products and market fit by building comprehensive data warehouses and collecting the right types of data will help companies to truly excel in their financially performance as well as increasing customer satisfaction. Simplifying things, utilizing data to create insights help companies take appropriate data-driven actions and decisions. Looking at some of the best-in-class data-driven companies of today, such as Spotify, Netflix or Amazon, taking actions and pursue change based on data is in their DNA. However, for many companies (the vast majority?) the music stops at generating insights, or even less sophisticated than that – with many companies struggling to just make sense of their data.
Gut-feeling, nothing but a memory?
Historically, decisions have primarily been made based on gut-feeling, experiences, and strategies and nowadays that is not enough. You need to incorporate data into your decisions in order to stay competitive and to provide a good customers experience, and non-data-driven companies will be overrun by competitors.
Today, customers expect companies to know who they are, what they want and to get a fully personalized experience. The bar is set extremely high but with right analyzes, companies can better understand trends and demands for its specific products and get indications for what actions to take. Data, used right, is an important asset and a powerful enabler, however it is important to mention that data should not replace human insights – these are powerful too, and combining them both is an excellent approach in meeting or even exceeding the high expectations of the customers today and tomorrow.
A mini deep-dive into some cases
Bintess got the opportunity to help a well-known Swedish retailer to investigate the relationship between their products, sales and profitability. With our platform solution, we gather all necessary data from multiple sources and developed a specific analysis package for retailers. We mapped out each item’s contribution to the company’s total gross margin and identified that less than 30% of the products made up nearly 90% of the total gross margin. Furthermore, approximately 55% of the products contributed to 99% of the total gross margin. It goes without saying that an immediate action was to review the overall product portfolio.
Taking actions within procurements based on data insights related to profitability and customer purchasing patterns can not only increase margins and generate lots on revenue, but it can also help your company become more sustainable via not over producing on products that go to waste, nor utilizing transportation on products that are unnecessary returned.
Easier said than done, we know! So how can you make sure your data are taken into account when making decisions? There are probably a lot of good answers to that question but at Bintess, we think a good first point of action is to ensure your company is able to generate qualitative insights, with short intervals, that can easily be interpret and implemented.
From another case we did together with one of Sweden’s largest public transportation companies, we used our platform solution and analysis subscription service to generate insights that are used in daily operations. Based on actions from these insights, the company managed, among other great things, to increase the punctuality with over 11% in just 6 months. Data used right is very powerful!
To summarize; Start with identifying what data you need to analyze for a specific question/area, analyze the data and visualize the result in a clear and understandable way. Generate insights and hypothesis based on the analyzes, work iteratively with testing hypothesis, follow-up and implement learnings as you go along. Said and done :)
Interested in knowing more, don’t hesitate to contact us!