Business intelligence. In a retail environment, business intelligence describes computer-based strategies used in finding and analyzing data. Based on key performance indicators set by your organization, you can use this information to improve your store operations, optimize customer relationships, and maximize profits.
But since customers are the lifeblood of the retail store, you also need to be able to quantify traffic volume in every location, and connect that information to business intelligence metrics. That's where people-counting systems come in.
By using an automated system to keep track of every customer who sets foot in your retail operation, you can start determining what percentage of your visitors are buyers. And if your sales have decreased from the previous month or year, you can easily determine whether less people are visiting your store or fewer of your visitors are turning into buyers.
People counting can be as simple or as complicated as you need it to be. Counters can be wired or wireless, hand-operated or automated, and are scalable based on the size and area of your retail operation. But once you have raw data about the number of visitors, you'll need a way to analyze that information in a way that takes into account your key performance indicators.
The best business intelligence should offer historical, current, and future predictive views of what's going on in your retail store. The individual and collective data serves as a support system for your decision-making, ensuring that you have a complete and accurate picture of what's occurring every day.
And as more and more retailers are discovering, you need people counting systems seamlessly integrated with business intelligence collection, to give everyone in your organization a bird's-eye view of each store. This combination can help you truly quantify sales achievement based on the opportunity available. You can see which sales associates are having the greatest impact on your success and measure that performance in real-time, rather than weeks or months later.
That's why retailers are beginning to see more and more collaboration in bringing these two important business systems together. In a partnership announced recently, SalesFloorLIVE.com, a powerful business intelligence technology design, and SenSource, a company that provides retail people counters, joined forces to help retail businesses work smarter.
"The combined capabilities this SenSource agreement provides is a tremendous "win-win" for the retail industry," Scott Roller, CEO of SalesFloorLIVE.com said. "Retailers are uniquely positioned to track in real-time one concise picture of what is happening in each store. They can stay on top of critical metrics, increase their contribution margins, increase employee productivity, and ultimately deliver to their customers a higher level of customer service."
By taking data from people counting systems, and leveraging that information with real-time management, tracking, and performance measurements contained in business intelligence metrics such as Customer Value (CV), Service Intensity (SI), and Sales Per Hour (SPH), the retail operation becomes instantly more transparent. And that means you can make decisions based on what's actually happening in your retail stores, rather than what you think is happening.
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