Ever since computers got involved in the corporate world, a lot of things changed the way they function. Most modern businesses nowadays are heavily reliant on computers, and without them, they probably wouldn’t be even slightly as successful as they currently are.
Humans may be great at making deals and communicating, but when it comes to some of the more complicated tasks such as keeping track of analytics and data, we get heavily out-scaled by the machines. Luckily, we’ve found a way to make the perfect scenario where computers are able to take care of that part for us, while we can go and focus on other more important things.
If you are new in the world of retail business, chances are that you don’t really know much about these things yet. Fortunately, we’re here to help you, and today we’re going to talk about the importance of analytics and data, so if you are interested in learning more, feel free to read until the end.
What are analytics?
By definition, analytics means making a complete observation and analysis of statistics or any other type of data. This can be done with the data from your business, or from the data of any other thing. A very simple and “raw” example would be the following. Let’s say that you own a bakery, and today you managed to sell a bunch of products from five different categories. The next day you sell even more products, but the categories are pretty different from yesterday’s ones.
If you keep track of which products you sold and how much you’ve sold in quantity, this is called data. When you’re keeping track of this data with the help of your computer, potentially making changes and “tweaks” in order to increase sales, this is called analytics. Now, for our bakery example, you probably think that having an entire personalized computer software dedicated for this is a bit of an “overkill” because you are not selling more than a few dozen items per day. However, imagine what happens with companies that sell more than thousands of items per day. Without the help of a computer, tracking all of this data would be impossible.
How can I use analytics to my advantage?
Just like we mentioned earlier, analytics is something that can help you form better marketing strategies and boost sales. However, we can’t really always look at raw numbers and find the best way to improve our current strategy, and this is one of the main reasons why we use computer software.
One of the few examples, which also happens to be the current industry standard, is Incompetitor from Intelligence Node. It’s a sophisticated, AI-Powered system that is able to give you complete insight on your data, as well as a lot of information about the changes and tweaks that your current competitors are making, meaning that you can prepare in time before they completely take you out of the game. If you are a person that appreciates good organization and transparency, all in one place, this is definitely the right choice for you. Incompetitor is able to show you an entire graph that tracks how all of your products are performing in the same time, at real-time. The graphs are really well-designed, with different colors that allow you to quickly understand what’s going on. And last but not least, you are able to optimize all of the prices of your products based on the accurate data that you’ve just observed thanks to the software. Feel free to click here if you are interested to try out a demo or take a better look from the official website.
Is my competition using the software of this kind?
If you are a “newbie” in the world of retail, and you are wondering how your competitors manage to always stay on top of their game, well, the truth is that they’re using these sophisticated computer programs that allow them to be on step ahead of everyone else. If you truly want to make yourself known in this, and expand your business, you should definitely learn more about these modern data-managing solutions.
Without the ability to take a look at all of your sale statistics and current performance of each one of your products, you are not able to make strategic decisions that will lead your business into further success. Just like the bakery example we provided a bit earlier in this article.
If you take a look at some of the most popular online marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay, and you observe a certain seller for a couple of days, you will notice that they constantly change prices on some of their products, and there’s a really good reason for that. Sometimes the prices increase, and sometimes they go down, but that’s not a decision that the seller makes on their own. When you work retail, you must constantly have a clear picture of the entire “game” and carefully observe every step that your competitors make.
You are not the only one who is selling a product of the same kind, there are many other sellers that do so as well. This means that if they lower their price, you’ll have to do it as well, otherwise you won’t be able to keep up. We all know that people get more attracted to cheaper things, and if your $20 product is displayed right next to a $15 product of the exact same kind, we all know what people are going to click first. Changing your price doesn’t always have to be because of your competition. Maybe a certain product is not performing the way it should, or simply said, it’s not being sold as much as you would like. Adjusting the price or making a promotional sale will change this, and it will increase your revenue.
Most sellers change the prices of their products more than two or three times per day. This means that if you were to do this all by yourself and manually, you would have to be in front of your computer 24/7 and still not be able to make it all in time. Luckily, computer programs can do these things for us, and this is why they have such a big role in the corporate world.
