Presented with various choices, customers today can be a fickle bunch. This should be a top concern for businesses as customer churn is costly. According to research firm Forrester, it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to retain and enrich an existing one.
The good news is that businesses now have access to technologies that can enable them to gain insights into the ever-changing consumer trends disrupting the market. Those who can quickly identify and even perhaps influence a new consumer trend or disruption are poised to capitalise on the opportunity before the competition heats up.
Customer intelligence woes
So why are businesses struggling to keep up with customer demands? There are two reasons for this: they rely on past data to make decisions for the near future, and they lack the ability to make sense of their data to make timely, informed business decisions.
“The speed of competition is picking up. What used to work in the past of waiting a month or two to try and make a decision is just not good enough anymore. [For instance,] organisations currently need to decide on pricing matters on an hourly basis [but] they do not have the ability to achieve that,” says Sean O’Neill, chief product officer at GfK, a consumer and market intelligence, analytics and consulting services provider.
He continues: “[Moreover,] with the deluge of data available today coming from all corners, organisations do not know where to fit all this data together and if it is even reliable. Traditional market intelligence platforms lack the capabilities to understand and utilise new consumer data generated from social and digital media exposure.”
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Without such capabilities, he adds, businesses will find it challenging to comprehend what motivates consumer spending, the expectations of different demographic segments, and customers’ perception of products and services. This prevents those organisations from effectively building customised and relevant solutions and delivering highly individualised experiences, which could hinder them from reaching their ultimate business potential.
Transforming data into gold
Businesses need more than pure data to win in today’s intensely pressurised and fast-moving business environment. They need strategic guidance and market predictions rooted in that data.Sean O’Neill, chief product officer, GfK
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To empower businesses to capitalise on their data, GfK offers an integrated software powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that delivers market, brand and consumer intelligence together with predictive recommendations.
Called gfknewron, it connects all the relevant sales and consumer data across global product portfolio into an easy-to- use, customised, intelligent solution that enables enterprises and brands to react, plan, predict, pivot, and win.
O’Neill explains: “With gfknewron, what happens next is in your hands and multiple teams can directly access the data at any time and address cross-departmental problems using the same dataset.”
“[It enables organisations] to join up point-of-sale data, which historically had been used heavily in some sales and category markets, but not always as available to some of the other functions. And [it combines] that with consumer sentiment data, which traditionally might have been under the brand or marketing team, but maybe other parts of the company weren’t even aware it was there. So that allows the whole company to move faster, making better decisions.”
Additionally, gfknewron offers scenario simulations that can identify challenges at an early stage and help with strategic planning. Businesses can also use the AI-supported forecasts to make fast, informed decisions to stay ahead of market competition.
“[In short,] the software is extremely simple with an easy user interface that the entire company can use to solve its business problems. [Organisations that leverage it can expect to] save 30% of the time spent on root cause analysis, plan promotions with just two clicks and understand brand uplift in seconds,” O’Neill says.
More than just a digital tool
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Apart from being the company’s new digital tool, gfknewron is also a new business model and cultural shift for GfK to compete more effectively and remain highly profitable in today’s highly volatile business world.
“With gfknewron, we will empower our clients to adopt a much more data- and analytics-centred way of working. This is an important milestone in the transformation of GfK from a market researcher to an AI-powered data analytics and consulting company, enabled by a complete Software as a Service infrastructure,” says O’Neill.
He also shares that AI has helped reshape the company’s organisational chart by liberating workers, transforming roles, and flattening top-down company hierarchies.
“[We’re now more confident] to move at speed in a competitive market. AI, in combination with automation, has increased collaboration both within and between teams as an important goal for the business. We are focused on innovation, thereby changing the fabric of the company’s organisational chart. The business value of AI insights extends beyond productivity wins and cost-cutting,” he says.
Committed to enabling accurate decision-making
Enterprises and brands will continue facing unprecedented challenges brought upon by digitalisation and industry disruption, massive data overload, fleeting consumer behaviour and unexpected interruptions accelerated by the ongoing pandemic.
Those that have been making decisions based solely on experience and reactive data are most likely to go out of business soon. Success, in today’s highly disruptive world marked by trillions of data points, is very much dependent on making the right decisions that are supported by always-on insights, expert recommendations and predictions from AI.
As such, GfK is committed to releasing new or enhanced features weekly and continuously adding new market data into gfknewron. “We’re not just describing to our clients what happened yesterday but also helping them make more accurate decisions at speed for tomorrow,” says O’Neill. That way, organisations can react to changing market dynamics faster than ever to maximise revenue, essentially turning disruptions into profits.
Photo: Unsplash
