- July 10, 2023
- , 5:27 pm
Give me more...
BIG DATA is a Buzzword that continues to be thrown around within the Category Management community. How do we capture it? How do we mine it? What insights can I get from it? Good questions.
The light bulb around these questions hit me about 8 years ago. My Category Manager comes into my office one day and declares “I blew up ACCESS”. Well, maybe it was more than 8 years ago.
“I’ve run out of space”. He explained.
In an effort to determine a “street corner market share”, that is, by combining store latitude and longitude coordinates with delivery data, he was looking to determine which stores were winning with our brand by sku, AT THE STREET LEVEL! Essentially, the goal was to create a brand “arms race” with the guy across the street. That broke ACCESS.
“Ok?” Acting partly surprised, confused and strangely proud of this discovery. I suspect the feeling was similar to when the pioneers hit the Pacific Ocean- what do we do now? It was a moment.
Today, of course, we don’t have the limitations of gathering and storing data like we did “in the old days”. Tools are all over the place to help us navigate, mine, and garner insights from massive amounts of data. Between “The Cloud”, Artificial Intelligence, and Tableau, insights are often limited by an analyst’s imagination. I mean, come on, “DATA SCIENTIST” is the hottest job in CPG today.
Give me more.... data!
In our industry, store level data is the next frontier. Specifically, the thousands of data points that are presented to shoppers everyday as they shop for groceries, building supplies, beverages, cleaning supplies hold incredible insights that improve decision making, supply chain efficiency and strategy. Imagine if you could capture the data that you can “See” at shelf at any moment, consistently over time. Pricing, Packaging, Position, Point of Sales materials, New Items, Special Packs, Out of Stocks for all brands in a category from one store, every day. Now capture all of this across every store in every chain and every market. Possibility is becoming a necessity.
Everything you can see can be captured and stored in the “cloud”. What insights can you get from this data alone? Then, add sales data; add local weather data; add data from your CRM partner. Let’s go crazy, how about add which songs were playing in the store or when the smell from the bread coming out of the oven. Give me more…..
AI-Image Recognition is a data goldmine
Image Recognition technology similar to what’s used for facial recognition, leverage AI engines to “SEE” everything that comes from a picture such as pricing, products, positioning, point of sale and more. This data is important because it’s captured in real time, in incredible detail, without the bias of a human collecting manually. Pure “Cause and Effect” analysis that will “BLOW YOUR MIND” vs “BLOW UP ACCESS”.
For more information search Maxerience.com or contact Jason DeRienzo at jderienzo@smsb.com