Three Ways a Cloud Data Platform Can Help Retail Thrive

To survive in today’s economic climate, retailers, consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers, and ecommerce companies need the power to leverage data available from sources such as online and mobile transactions, data exchanges, social media, and the Internet of Things. Analyzing massive volumes of data on customers, product trends, and supply chains generates insights that can lead to better decision-making and happier customers. But analysis is complicated when companies have legacy systems and data silos that hinder advanced analytics, jeopardize data security, and prevent real-time data sharing. 

Retail organizations are turning to the cloud to overcome these obstacles. The cloud can break down barriers to the easy flow of data, transform analytics capabilities, and unlock data-driven insights. Here are three ways implementing a cloud data platform such as Snowflake Cloud Data Platform can help retail and CPG companies better serve customers, decrease costs, and increase profits.

Predictive Analytics

Faster product lifecycles and increasingly complicated operations are pushing retailers to identify areas in the supply chain to maximize profits and reduce costs. Retailers and CPG companies need data insights to build elasticity and scale into areas such as supply chain, inventory, logistics, and staffing.

Snowflake’s advanced analytics and data modeling help retail and CPG companies make better predictions about when specific items will be in demand and help them make faster, better supply chain decisions. Snowflake natively ingests immense volumes of granular semi-structured and fragmented data from every phase of the supply chain, including log, sensor, and machine data, collecting it in one place for easier analysis. Using real-time visibility into supply and distribution networks, advanced analytics help retailers decrease inefficiencies in the supply chain and anticipate item availability. And with on-demand concurrency, retailers can run a host of models in parallel without performance degradation issues. 

Micro-Level Insights

Most of the business decisions successful global retailers make aren’t global; they’re hyperlocal. Decisions are made at the regional or even individual store level about what type of inventory to stock based on the weather or local trends, how many salespeople are needed during holiday periods, or which suppliers to use based on pricing and logistics. 

Snowflake has a number of capabilities that enable retailers to drive performance and efficiency through granular data. Structured and semi-structured data from different sources and channels are consolidated into a centralized repository, allowing both universal and granular views of business and customers. This facilitates easier data modeling, providing predictive analytics that can help make data-driven decisions. 

Customer Reach

Marketing departments have a colossal task: to personalize the promotion and sales of their products and services for every potential buyer out there. Ecommerce streams produce massive volumes of data on consumer behavior that can help marketers deliver what buyers want when they want it. But outdated systems and fragmented information silos can thwart retailers from leveraging this data to provide targeted marketing. 

Snowflake Cloud Data Platform gives marketers a single source of data aggregated from various internal and external sources. Armed with this massive trove, they can use Snowflake as a personalization engine. For example, they can build product affinity models that feed recommendations into a customer relationship management (CRM) system, which can then send out customized, targeted emails to each customer based on data including their buying history, their region, and even what they bought on other sites. Snowflake’s tremendous concurrency empowers multiple users to build on the data without affecting performance. 

For more on how Snowflake is helping retailers become truly data-driven to thrive in today’s economy, download our ebook, 5 Ways Data is Reshaping Retail.