July - Sep2021Retail Business ReviewP JULY - AUGUST B"- 2021retailtechinsights.com8Achieving Insights in anOmnichannel EnvironmentEach month there are approximately 171,000 searches for omnichannel on YouTube and another 228,000 on Amazon as people hunt for information on what it is, how to best implement it and, perhaps most importantly, how to realize value in one of the most complex business environments to exist. The searches grow in volume each year and reached some of their highest levels in April 2018 as searches on each channel grew more than 22 percent.Searchers will find countless videos, books, tutorials and other instructional materials on the above, but what’s often missing is arguably the hardest element for today’s Chief Data Officer or Chief Analytics Officer to meaningfully capture and analyze: unstructured data. As SAS notes on its website, “traditional methods of data analysis cannot efficiently derive value from this unstructured data.” Yet this is where so much value exists because it forces organizations to look externally beyond its existing customer databases that are nearly universally based on a consumer’s direct interaction with the company.Traditional data lakes are filled with demographic and transactional information that was once enough in a single or multi-channel environment where the consumer’s expectations weren’t nearly as high as they are today. The basic purchase history, email address and macro shopping behaviors were enough to fuel mostly inefficient marketing campaigns that didn’t integrate offers and message across channels, customer care that was delivered without fully understanding the lifetime value of an individual and store clerks By Reid Greenberg, SVP, Kantar RetailIn My Opinion
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