Business Intelligence in a broad range of Industries
Here at Select Distinct we are very fortunate that we get to work across a broad range of industries. Many of them have the same challenges of putting their data to use, and using it to drive business performance improvements
In many circumstances many of the use cases can be fairly generic, such as analysing customer lifetime values by reviewing their purchasing histories or transforming a trial balance into Profit and Loss accounts and a balance sheet. But there are also a great many interesting industry specific use cases.
We outline some of these below
Retail
The retail industry generates and captures huge amounts of data, from transactions through to inventory and location data
Key data for retailers is data that supports the most important aspects
Customers – The Customer is King, with a deep retail sector experience we understand that everything in retail should be centred around the customer and giving them what they expect
The phrase retail is about detail is used a lot, and this really means that the data coming from the main moving parts needs to be leveraged to help understand success and avoid failures.
From forecasting sales demand, carrying the right levels of inventory. Customer experience as frictionless as possible. Targeting special offers to the right people at the right time. Running the right property portfolio with presence in the right locations for your customer base. Pricing optimisation to maximise profitability or to penetrate a market
E-Commerce
E-Commerce has a solid core of a lot of the same data use cases as bricks and mortar retail, with some very interesting specifics
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Understanding Impressions, Page Ranks, Click Through rates. See how you compare to competitors in your target market for organic search terms
Digital Advertising performance provides data for impressions, clicks with a cost per click that when managed strategically can bring a real competitive advantage
When you understand your customer you can personalise your offering to them, using buying patterns to recommend products likely to trigger interest
Wholesale
Wholesale businesses will also use a lot the same core data as retailers, with retailers being their customers. They not only have to understand the retailers but it can be a huge advantage to see the stocks and sell through of the products that they supply to the retailers
Brands that supply wholesale into retailers have a keen interest in protecting the value of the brand and don’t like to see heavy discounting of their products which can permanently devalue those brands
Fashion
The fashion industry uses data on emerging trends and feeds these trends into product collections. Capitalising on the trends to be the next big thing, Green is the new black!
Using social media data to gauge tastes and fashions, and spotting trends in searches as indicators on what will be popular and what is on the way out
Beauty
The beauty industry uses similar data to the fashion industry to predict trends and tastes. And increasingly the products have a shelf life after which the products are deemed past their best. This places a greater emphasis on demand forecasting and carry the right level of inventory
Food Production
Food Production takes the emphasis of shelf life significantly further with some products having very short shelf life. Accurate up to date inventory information and reliable demand forecasting can be the difference between success and failure. Its often a lot easier said than done too. Large seasonal events such as Christmas can be fairly consistent and predictable demand. But trying to predict demand for barbecue products around an Easter bank Holiday in the UK is another matter. The weather variability and the moving dates combine to create a broad spread of possibilities. Scenario planning is vital
Food traceability is another complicated requirement. With food producers needing the ability to trace which batches of any ingredient have been consumed into which batches of finished goods.
Manufacturing
The Manufacturing Industry needs to use data to measure throughputs, capacities, product quality, costs.
Overall Equipment Effectiveness is a leading benchmark tool, comprising the core areas of Availability, Performance and Quality
90% availability x 90% Performance x 90% Quality multiplies through to 72.9% overall
Data collected during manufacturing includes parts, labour and machine time. Whether is a continuous production runs in batches or discrete one off fabrications they all use data to track performance
Property
The Property industry uses data such as property valuation models, expected rental yields, loan to value models to understand the equity. Location and Demographic data are highly valuable sources of information all of which can help property investment decisions.
Whether you are a property investor, or a retailer deciding on whether to take out a lease or purchase an alternative property
Facilities Management
Facilities Management companies usually manage a diverse portfolio of buildings, with data coming from separate systems that are increasingly cloud connected software systems (SAAS)
Data integration is a huge opportunity to help track workloads of employees, contractors, sub contractors. Ensure travel times are fairly factored in and labour cost properly accounted for. As well as combining these factors to help efficiently operate the associated payroll
Transport
Transport companies or transport departments have a number of similarities too, with the need to be able to track vehicles and drivers. Considering the routing times and mandated rest times.
Having the ability to predict demand over time helps to make sure the fleet is maintained with the correct capacity for the size of the business. Pulling together the fixed costs of these large expensive assets spread over their useful life and combining it with the variable (usage based) costs of fuel, wear and tear and driver related costs helps to give a holistic view
Accountants
Accountancy practices can benefit from gaining a customer centric view of their client base. By combining an understanding of contracted services and future workloads. The practice can determine the optimum level of skills needed to support the client base and see the bottlenecks.
Bringing other data such as website, social media, event attendees and more can help to see if enough emphasis is placed on building a healthy pipeline of new clients
Small Businesses
Last but not least in our overview of different industries are the small businesses.
Small businesses don’t have the scale to have many of these specialisms. With a smaller number of employees typically carrying out a wider range of activities.
Business Intelligence is not inaccessible for small businesses, but typically the large technology vendors focus on the large corporates first, then slowly release offerings down the scale until eventually getting to small businesses.
We see many opportunities for small businesses to take advantage of their data.
Analysing business performance and KPIs from accounting data and transactional data.
Understanding customers from CRMs and transactional data.
Tracking Sales and Marketing performance with data from social media, website data
Identifying sales trends.
Often small businesses lack the skills for the complex analysis, but real progress can be seen with good basic disciplines and tracking what is important
The tools don’t need to be expensive with many offerings starting at low or zero costs and growing with the business
Summary
These are just some industry examples we work with on a daily basis.
They not only apply to industries specifically but may equally be applied to departments within industries too. E.G. A Retailer may have wholesale, E-Commerce, Property, Transport, Facilities Management even manufacturing
We often see real value in taking our bi learnings from one industry and applying it another totally different industry, that’s what makes the world of business intelligence so fascinating
If you want to hear more about any of the industries mentioned you can follow the links in each section or get in touch to see how we can help your business make the best use of it’s data.
