Retailers must leverage data to survive this pandemic

By utilizing customer intelligence and better data management, retailers can collect supply chain data in real-time, make better orders to suppliers based on customer intelligence.

While major industries from tech to the public sector felt COVID’s pain points, not many felt them as acutely as retail. Retailers must now contend with everything from unreliable supply chains to a limit on the number of customers in-store at any given time, as consumer behavior shifted with social distancing guidelines and new needs.

For example, e-commerce grew by 44% in 2020. As we begin recovering from the pandemic, retailers increasingly push to deliver their customers an in-store shopping experience as seamless as it is online. However, these new digital strategies rely on precise inventory management, which remains a pain point for many brick-and-mortar stores.

For retailers to ensure they’re not missing out on future opportunities, they need to leverage one thing: data. By utilizing customer intelligence and better data management, retailers can collect supply chain data in real-time, make better orders to suppliers based on customer intelligence. Data will help retailers fully integrate their supply chain, customer, and in-store data to ensure they’re creating an in-store experience that’s competitive to shopping online and other new shopping behaviors.

The pandemic has revealed the fragility of the supply chain. With unprecedented unpredictability in what products stores will and will not have access to and when retailers need to integrate real-time data management into their online operations. Investing in supply chain data strategies enables retailers to adapt and adjust to sudden breakdowns from their suppliers.

Like Wayfair and Dick’s Sporting Goods, some companies leverage real-time inventory data to make their supply chain transparent to their customers, so they are always up to date on what is and isn’t on the shelves. Investing in data management tools to collect supply chain data in real-time empowers retailers to create better customer experiences and saves stores the estimated billions in lost sales to customers discovering their desired item is out of stock.

However, supply chain erosion is not the only supply problem retailers will have to overcome. Some issues facing supply and inventory come from consumers, like last March’s run on toilet paper or the PS5 selling out before they even made it to shelves. Seemingly instantaneous changes in customer behavior can instantly impact what items retailers are prioritizing in orders from suppliers. But without understanding customer behavior, retailers can overcorrect and wind up with dead inventory on their hands.

To avoid collecting dead inventory and ensure orders to suppliers are accurate to their customers’ desires, retailers need to integrate customer intelligence with their supply chain information systems. Combining this information empowers retailers to place orders from suppliers based on precise predictive models of customer behavior.