Analytics holds the key to greater velocity in retail

One of the great challenges that retailers face is one of velocity. In a competitive business world, it's important to act quickly and respond in a timely fashion to all of your customers' present and even future needs. If a certain product becomes fashionable, or a price trend has a profound effect on the direction of a given market, companies need to act quickly to respond to the latest goings-on and deliver people what they want.

This is rarely easy - but the good news is it's becoming a simpler process with time. The growth of analytics has emerged as a major boon for retailers. Thanks to modern technologies for gathering information and ensuring data quality, companies can now find insights more quickly and act upon them to achieve desired results.

This makes for an exciting new era in the retail industry, according to Retail Info Systems News. Ron Menich, chief data scientist at retail analytics firm Predictix, explained via the news source that with data now readily available, and cloud solutions on hand for sharing and analyzing it all, a new world of possibilities has opened up.

"For retailers that are ready to embrace the power of big data and advanced analytics, the answers aren't in the traditional systems they've relied upon until now," Menich stated. "Instead, the answer is in the cloud. And the good news is that as new retail applications exploit the power and promise of the cloud, retailers can move quickly to turn big data insights to their advantage - and to become more relevant to their customers."

As competition heats up between rival sellers, having a superior approach to data will prove essential. Having high-quality consumer information helps all businesses to better understand their target markets and demographics.