07 Mar Instinct vs analytics – The big showdown!

One of the biggest challenges in our industry is changing the perceptions of bricks & mortar retailers that have been in the industry for decades – much, much longer than their online counterparts. It’s the age old dilemma of trying to teach an old dog new tricks.

Don’t get me wrong, the bricks & mortar retailers that are still around have been doing an excellent job – largely because management has had a great handle on what’s been happening on the ground. It’s no small feat establishing a successful bricks & mortar store, especially in the days before retail analytics.

While this gut feel approach has served many bricks & mortar retailers well, retail analytics can provide access to insight that they simply didn’t have before. Just imagine how much more powerful a talent for retail will be when based on cold, hard facts.

Over the last few years, we’ve put many store managers gut feel to the test with our retail analytics solution and boy were they surprised by the results!

Gut feel vs retail analytics – real world examples

Example 1: The Clicker

One store manager believed that she could merely have someone at the door with a clicker to get an accurate count of how many people enter her store. As you can imagine, when compared with the figures from Syenap’s Customer Entry Counting Tool, the accuracy of her strategy was definitely flawed – by approximately 25%. Not only that, but analytics software never needs to take a bathroom break.

Example 2: The Predictor

Another excellent example is the time a store put our Queue Management System (QMS) to the test – and we put their wits to the test in return. The store manager tried to anticipate the length of the queue and added more tellers when he suspected there may be a backlog. We showed that with the QMS, we kept wait times consistent for 96% of the time versus 32% without the system. And to add insult to injury, we did it with 27% less staff.

Example 3: The Convert

This is my favourite example because we managed to convert one of our most doubting clients into a believer. We alerted the manager of a store to the fact that their conversion rate was below average during a particular hour. He was adamant that this was not the case and set out to prove us wrong. He stood outside the store during this hour until he had to admit that people were leaving without purchasing.

Instinct or analytics? No need to choose.

The greatest misconception we encounter is that retail analytics and instinct can’t coexist. This is holding bricks & mortar retailers back and preventing them from reaching their full potential.

Click here to chat to Syenap and see how our retail analytics solution can work with your instinct and experience to increase revenue in your bricks & mortar store.