Victor Ezeja
AdminBusiness owners across Nigeria and Africa will greatly increase the number of their customers by allowing data speak to themselves (read contextualizing data) without despising small data. This was the submission of the CEO of Data Science Nigeria, Bayo Adekanbi at the 2023 Africa Retail Congress held over the weekend.
While other experts at the event harped on how retailers can leverage the rise of data analytics and big data to drive a better understanding of the industry, consumer and market in general, Adekanbi pointed out that there are tons of small data retailers can use to better understand their business.
During the panel discussion featuring industry giants from diverse niches such as e-commerce, banking, fintech, FMCG, he stated that there are a lot of disjointed data that retailers cannot make sense of through contextualisation.
“There is so much that we have all over the place that we need to have a way of touching the data so that they can speak to themselves because data is only powerful when disparate, disjointed data are aligned together so that we find common patterns in margins.
“This is critical because people are not statistics, they are bundles of emotions and it is in aggregating data that we begin to segment people and outcomes,” the Data Science boss said.
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Experts at the talk-shop not only harped on the importance of data but equally emphasized the kinds of data and how to interpret them for better performance with a call on bankers to integrate retail knowledge into their operations.
Other speakers at the event spoke on privacy and security of data and why retailers should ensure customers’ data is used for what it is stated for. There was also the talk which held that customers’ online experience should be seamless.
For the former CEO of Opay, Olu Akanmu, it is not only retailers in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) or e-commerce sector that need the application of retail knowledge but bankers too. He compared the retailing of goods and services to banking and its products.
Akanmu said bankers should deviate from the conventional approach they judge performance but instead look into individual customer data and how they transact with the bank.
According to him, “If we take a retail mindset to look at the business of the branch and granulate it and pass it from the foundation. How many customers have we got in this branch? How many of them come in to do transactions every 30 days? …how much are you making per customer?
“You can begin to form that into the revenue you make on a monthly basis. What will be the incremental value in revenue if the customer uses more products or services of the bank?”
He asserted that those who practice their retail banking business this way are bound to be better retail bankers than the traditional way people do branch banking and further advised the alignment of data architecture to the retail business model.
On the strategies traditional brick and mortar businesses can use to make a seamless transition into the digital era, Jan Tucker said retailers should design the online store to be similar to the physical in look and feel.
He maintained that the customer experience and journey should be similar to what is obtained in the physical store.
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