James Taylor's Decision Management

I have blogged about Best Buy and it's program for customer-centricity at various times and I was reminded of the program by an article in Business Week this week - "At Best Buy, Marketing Goes Micro". This particular article was about how Best Buy is trying to get more input from it's local stores so that they can customize their behavior not based solely on central analysis but on local expertise. While at first sight this may look like a case of manual decision making taking over from automated, the truth is more complex.

The use of analytics in retail is growing fast and Best Buy is one of the primary proponents of a more analytic approach to their stores as well as their marketing. This has been very successful and it is the existence of a data-driven, explicit decision making process that makes it possible for a big retailer to bring in local know-how. Without the existing analytics and automation, no what-if would be possible and the corporation would not be able to assess the impact of these local initiatives nor compare them with any kind of real benchmark. The local staff are providing their expertise and overriding standard options today but it seems likely that in the future the decisions will be automated in a way that brings that expertise in more directly. Only once that is the process can you really balance the local experience with the multi-channel reality of a modern retailer. Customer segmentation, predictive analytics about customer buying patterns, analytically-driven personas can all help make a better store and a much better online/direct mail environment. Bringing local experts into the picture can only help.