Analytics in Indian retail industry

Abstract

We have moved past from the age where decisions were made using heuristics, intuition and experience. With the size of business increasing, one cannot resort to making decisions based on heuristics as a small error has to potential to erode profitability and risk the business into extinction. The cost of mistake increases with the scale of business. But, fortunately, advancements in technology have thrown open plethora of options to capture data which can be used in decision making. Today, increasingly many retailers in India are realizing the significance of data and the power it can wield on their business. Most players in the organized retailing have mechanisms to capture data. But each player stands at a different level in terms of driving the decisions based on insights from the data. While few retailers are still scratching the surface with no progress beyond sales reporting as they cannot figure out how to utilize the data, Amazon3, an E-commerce player has reached to an extent of shipping the products even before the customer becomes aware of his need to buy the product and orders it.