Effective retail merchandising and the adoption of perceptive commercial marketing strategies are becoming ever-more important in today’s fiercely competitive retail environment. With so many brands and retailers competing for custom across the multi-channel commercial platform that defines modern day retailing, directors and planners are increasingly reliant upon the provision of accurate data and analytics to ascertain the true effectiveness of their current retail marketing charter. However, it is how that final data is actually used and implemented into the overall business plan that will determine its true effectiveness in the long term.

Some retail management teams have remained a little wary of data and analytics, preferring instead to rely upon their own industry experience and intuition. But this approach can only take a business a certain distance along the road to success. With modern retail technology advancing at a furious pace, it would be unwise and perhaps somewhat foolhardy to not take advantage of the wealth of real-time information available at the click of a button.

According to recent research, retailers with access to extensive big data gleaned from advanced retail software concentrate their merchandising efforts in three key areas:

• Improving product range
• Enhancing product availability
• Improving the efficiency of future demand forecasting.

This intense analysis of product data allows merchandising teams to monitor current trends; provide the correct individual product mix to particular store locations; and to better forecast future sales. While this is clearly beneficial for the business, there is another set of data and analytics which retailers may be missing out on, and that is physical store analytics. Some may think this base-level data is not valuable, but without comprehensive estate intelligence many in-store marketing campaigns will at the very least take too long to implement or in the worst case scenario, fail.

In order for a large brand or retailer to run a truly successful promotional campaign, it is necessary to assimilate product analysis into the wider estate data, gleaned from comprehensive retail audits. This includes everything from store layout analysis, brand compliance checks right through to measuring aisle lengths to the types of shelves available.

In many instances retailers are carrying out an audit with a level of detail, but typically, these are single-minded in what they are trying to discover and often taking place in a store where another audit is being conducted to gather unrelated estate information for a different purpose. As much as this silo-mentality is costing the company hundreds of thousands of pounds in redundancy of resource the data gathered is seldom stored or accessed for future analysis or implementation purposes. This is not intentional, but few organisations have the software or platform to make data digitally available.

There is a substantial volume of data which requires extensive retail audits in its initial assembly to make an audit and indeed a retail campaign meaningful. However, the value of the end result of accurate, wide-ranging data covering the entire retail estate and available at the push of a button more than outweighs the initial work.

Combining estate intelligence with detailed product analysis, progressive retailers are able to plan their retail strategies and employ effective merchandising solutions more accurately than ever before.