Breaking Down Data Silos to Enable Critical Decisions Through Enriched Insights

Achieving a single customer view across all channels by breaking down data silos

Customer data is so important to the retail industry that this ninety-minute Retail Hive digital boardroom discussion could have gone on for hours. Although everyone was at a different stage of their journey, all eight participating retailers shared common challenges, including data ownership, data silos, optimization of data insights, best practices for building a business case for data investment, and the journey to data integrity through trusted data that has accuracy, consistency, and context.

The group, hosted by Retail Hive recommended partner Precisely, comprised of a mixture of digital leaders, omnichannel specialists, customer experience experts, BI developers and data scientists, representing a diverse group of brands, from heritage consumer electronics to luxury beverages, homeware and fashion. Whilst some of the group are in the early stages of building new data warehouses and data lakes, others were more heavily focused on investing in customer data platforms to provide a truly omnichannel experience for their customers and use the data to drive better engagement.

This report summarizes the discussion and focuses on:

• Making sense of data
• Building a business case for data investment
• Breaking down internal silos
• Selecting the right third party proposals
• Achieving a single customer view across all channels
• The key takeaways from the group

Making Sense of Data

When it comes to customer data, legacy systems can cause huge problems, especially for brands holding years and years of insight. Trying to understand where data is being held, what makes sense, what can be trusted, and how to get different data sets and teams talking together were massive hurdles for the group. Additionally, with data coming through multiple channels such as eCommerce sites, mobile apps, and franchise partnerships, not to mention the different data silos of data ownership that can be experienced across organisations; successfully
managing data has proven to be hugely challenging.

Read this whitepaper to learn more about how retailers are working toward creating a single customer view (SCV), bridging the gap between online and offline to provide a truly omnichannel experience for their customers.