Survey Results Show Need For Retail BI

December 2012 Integrated Solutions For Retailers

By Russ Hill, senior director, retail, consumer products, wholesale distribution industry marketing, SAP

Innovative technology, particularly business intelligence (BI), is becoming a central priority in retail organizations.

Today, retailers need to wake up in survival mode. In the competitive world of social, mobile, and 5-second attention spans, it’s increasingly difficult to win a consumer’s interest and maintain this relationship. A major part of this challenge stems from the sheer volume of data. Retailers deal with customer data, product data, and data from their own internal business processes. With consumer relationships driving sales and lifetime customer value, turning Big Data into deeper customer understanding has become the key factor separating retail success from failure. As the Integrated Solutions for Retailers survey shows, innovative technology is becoming a central priority in retail organizations — particularly BI.