Glenn Taylor
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from the Retail TouchPoints website.
While brand manufacturers continue to invest in POS analytics and gather relevant customer data from retailer partners, 77 percent still believe they can be doing more with the data to improve their business, according to a report from Askuity.
Beyond internal decision-making, the data is used in buying and planning discussions with stores.
“On average, 65 percent of brands are actively using POS data today, and that’s actually quite encouraging and exciting,” said Victor Coscarella, Askuity’s head of marketing, during a recent webinar. “If we were to do this 10 years ago, we imagine that this number would be far lower. It could even be below 50 percent.”
The report is based on 343 respondents from more than 150 vendors that sell in one or more national retailers.
The report still found 28 percent of brands are not making use of POS data despite many major chains providing the data free of charge. The primary challenges include having an undefined strategy for using POS data, poor data quality, and a lack of analytics expertise or technology to manage the data effectively.
Managing data can be cumbersome. Nearly half of the respondents reported spending at least four hours per week managing or essentially formatting the data, even before any top-level analysis.
Silos are an issue. When data is managed and distributed by a single power user within the company, brands are far less likely to bring data insights into buyer meetings (41 percent), versus brands that provide self-service access to POS data for all team members (67 percent). Forty-four percent are not providing their field sales teams with access to real-time POS and/or inventory data on a mobile device.
The top ways brands are looking to extract more value from POS data:
- Better tracking of new product launches (59 percent);
- Improving promotional effectiveness (56 percent);
- Improving forecasting to reduce safety stock levels (55 percent);
- Optimizing merchandise assortment (55 percent);
- Strengthening relationships with retail buyers (51 percent) ;
- Improving on-shelf availability (39 percent).