Voorafgaand aan What’s going on in (R)etailing?! delen sprekers & partners van het congres hun visie, inzichten en onderzoeken op het gebied van retail.
Wat zijn toekomstige trends, welke rol gaat Big Data spelen, wat kunnen we leren van koplopers in de retailsector. Dit keer deelt Jorgen Heizenberg (CTO Big Data & Analytics Capgemini) zijn visie op het gedrag van de huidige consument, de kansen van Big Data en de toekomstige trends in de retailsector.
What is the most interesting development that you are seeing with regards to consumer behavior and customer engagement at the moment?
The most interesting development has to do with relevancy within the context of your engagement. What does that mean? Retailers have more information about their customer than ever before. They can use that information to create new products and services but also to optimize their engagements or contact moments with their customers. However these contacts need to be relevant and can be different depending on where they are in the customer journey. Sometimes it could be about brand, sometimes about conversion and sometimes about loyalty. The context is also important. For example, sending a predictive grocery list while I am in the supermarket and not when I am at the office reading my emails.
Which new innovations in the retail industry are of greatest interest to you and why?
One of the most important innovations in the industry is the change in culture. Most decisions so far have been made on gut feel. Retailers are more and more starting to understand that there is value in their data. And if they use this data in the right way they can increase profits or bring down cost. For example with better procurement and logistics or optimized personal offering and 1:1 marketing, made possible by Big Data & Advanced Analytics or data science.
Big Data & Retail, a successful combination? And what can retailer do with small data?
Big Data is just a term. It often refers to the enormous amount of data that is available today. However a lot of data is not relevant at all. It is just pollution. So it is not so much about volume. It is about finding the right data. Little things, for example shared via social media, that not only tell you about what a customer does (or buys) but what a customer actually thinks about a brand or a product. This is much more interesting.
Which future trends are you keeping an eye on?
Besides the fact that we need to find more relevant and contextual data in an increasing amount of facts, we find that most value is not so much in volume but much more in speed. It is about bringing the data and the analytics to use in an agile way. Time to market is therefore one of the most important future trends. From a technology point of view you are looking at things like streaming data, replication or in memory technology. From a business point of view, it is about understanding your customer in real time.
Why is the 2015 “What’s going on in (R)etailing” Congress so important?
With the challenges facing retailers today, knowing and understanding your customers, is more important than ever. Big Data & analytics offer the possibility to recognize your customer, value your customer, create a relationship and from there bring it to the next level. Retailers, more than almost any other industry, have the data to do so. But they are held back by fear of technology and cultural challenges. However, if they don’t start using these possibilities today, they might no longer exist tomorrow!
What’s going on in (R)etailing?!
Capgemini is op 16 april een van de partners van het congres What’s going on in (R)etailing?! in de Passenger Terminal Amsterdam. Een unieke mogelijkheid om van koplopers in de retailsector (zoals Mango, Jumbo, McDonalds, Bas Groep, Macintosh Retail Groep, Subway, Walgreens en vele anderen te horen hoe zij succesvol zijn.
Absoluut hoogtepunt is de presentatie van Werner Vogels, CTO Amazon. Hij geeft een uitgebreide kijk in de keuken van ‘s werelds grootste online retailer.
Meer informatie over het congres en alle sprekers is terug te vinden op de website van What’s going on in Retailing.
