4 Trends Driving Retailers in the New Age of Data

As data continues to grow at unprecedented speeds, retail organizations must embrace a data-driven mind-set to stay competitive. Considering that 90 percent of the world's data was created in the last two years, this won't be a curve that drops off. With the influx of bigger data and new types of data, retailers of all sizes increasingly depend on large sets of information to make better business decisions. Midsized retailers, now able to cross barriers to the new age of data, have fast become committed to discovering those insights and putting them to work for their operations and customer relationships.

The need for quality data has multiplied as reliance on it has grown. Ninety-three percent of retailers suffer from common data quality errors, the most prevalent being incomplete or missing data, according to Experian. Marketing departments demand high-quality information to discover upsell and cross-sell opportunities and to improve customer relationships. Customer service representatives use customer data to improve efficiency and satisfaction. Data-driven insights are also used to improve productivity, cut costs, reduce risk, and reach operational and strategic objectives. The rewards appear on the bottom line, too. Statistics show that data quality initiatives can boost revenue by 15 percent to 20 percent and drive a 20 percent to 40 percent increase in sales.

Meanwhile, there are still organizations continuing to take a reactive approach to data management, acting only when something goes wrong — and it can go very wrong. For example, multiple messages sent to the wrong person damages customer relationships, revealing a need to improve customer information. Or horror stories like the 17,000 men who were identified as pregnant and received mailings for obstetric and prenatal exams by British hospitals.

To increase revenues and improve efficiency, retailers must proactively manage data to ensure the highest quality data is being used for business intelligence. By taking this route, costly mistakes can be avoided and smarter decision making can begin.