Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Analytics beyond Technology Boundary!

This is another interesting story from Outlook Business. There was an interview with Future Group Chief Kishore Biyani in this month edition. In this interview, Kishore talks about his future plans in retailing & customer experience. Future Group is a large Indian business conglomorate that has its presence in vairous sectors including Retail, Media, Logistics and Finance. The Flagship business of this group is Retail and its one of the pioneers in low-cost large-scale retailing in India.
When we consider Technology and Business Intelligence as key sources of increasing sales in retailing business, Kishore thinks differently. This is what he has to say about his plans...
"We have a chief customer director. We have also appointed mythologists, sociologists, and anthropologists. We monitor everything that is happening in this country, and we try to respond as fast as possible. We’ve been building this team over the last six to eight months.".
I can understand psychologists. But look at the list - he has mythologists, sociologists and anthropologists. And for me who is from a Tech mindset, this perspective was a revelation!.
Yes, Technology, BI and Analytics alone may not be enough for driving business in your stores. While at one end, we are increasingly codifying the user experience using personalization, rule engines, inferencing and recommendation engines, the other end, another set of people are seriously looking for ways that would interact with Humans with Humanity!. And that is unique!.
Am sure, this approach will certainly and significantly improve the customer experience at Retail stores in the days to come...!
My thought is - How to match that unique customer experience in online stores using Technology?

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