Premium Retail – Data Analytic and Visualization for Field Marketing

As technology adoption grows globally, data is being generated by enterprises and consumers alike. By 2020, it is predicted that the annual volume of data will increase by a staggering 4300%. For corporations, the key to success will be in making use of this data to derive meaningful business insights, especially by using technology.

Here, we focus on one such organization – Premium Retail, whom Fingent has helped in reducing costs and increasing sales and overall efficiency. Fingent deployed an advanced data analytics and data visualization solutions making use of Premium retail’s data.

Premium Retail Services (PRS) Inc. based in Missouri, is a company that has provided comprehensive retailing solutions for over 25 years for companies like Procter and Gamble, Walmart and Best Buy. Their services include merchandising, assisted sales and training, field marketing etc.

The challenge

When Samsung retained PRS to provide comprehensive field marketing services on its behalf in the US market, it needed to deliver a wide range of capabilities pretty quickly. PRS began by assigning Field Marketing Representatives (FMR) to carry out essential activities across the US. The data associated with this assignment alone was extensive. PRS accesses information on more than 12 vertical retail segments that produce close to 1,000,000 data points per month. Now, PRS realized that this data was a treasure trove of business and consumer insights. However, its ability to use the data for informed decision making and guide assessments was hampered by its existing data management capabilities. Moreover, it used obsolete communication and reporting systems that relied heavily on excessive amounts of powerpoint and excel files. It took a long time to process and it was outdated.

How Fingent helped

Data analytics and data visualization are trusted methods to simplify complex information. Considering the variety, volume and velocity of data involved in PRS’s reporting, Fingent proposed to use these methods to create a solution that would reduce human efforts while increasing data accuracy, clarity and credibility.

After completing an inventory of the PRS systems, Fingent developed a plan to transform an approach that produced extensive amounts of unstructured and complicated data from many obsolete, single-window applications into an integrated and better-organized solution. Fingent found it essential to identify the data touchpoints and create scalable solutions, with automated responses that helped PRS to efficiently produce customized, comprehensible reports.

The different technologies used were as follows:

Programming languages – HTML, PHP, JS
Visualization libraries – d3.js, dc.js
Databases – MySQL, Apache

The impact

PRS, through the customized web application that Fingent created, was able to efficiently convert large volumes of data into user-friendly visual representations. This enabled easy analysis of data in different permutations. The data was presented through interactive displays of charts, tables and graphs that highlight what is significant.

This application helped PRS to manage its field marketing personnel by letting managers easily bring performance metrics into the reporting tools they already had. Moreover, the users were able to customize how information was presented to them in a personalized dashboard according to region, role, department or other attributes.

The benefits that PRS derived from this application include:

• High-quality data – Through rigorous analytics, PRS was able to achieve high-quality data, reduce errors and improve consistency
  Refined business processes – Through pattern analysis issues can be identified and solved in real time
• Bringing out significant insights – Through identification of trends and patterns, significant insights are brought out improving data transparency and accountability
• Easy data management – Time spent on data management is significantly reduced as have related costs. System reliability is improved

On the whole, with the custom web application developed by Fingent, PRS was able to reduce the human efforts involved in analyzing the enormous volumes of data that PRS managers received on a daily basis. It also helped PRS to restructure its business process into a more viable and effective model which has significantly increased its revenue generating capacity.