Fashion Marketing Agencies Lead the way with Business Intelligence
Business Intelligence (BI) is becoming a widely useful tool across the fashion industry for collecting, storing and analyzing past and present data of an enterprise. For smaller fashion companies without data analysts or tech experts, it can be difficult to manage the BI processes that are necessary for the company such as cleaning the data and making it visually presentable to the team in a very effective manner. Business intelligence can be defined as the usage of ‘decision support technology for the enterprise aimed at enabling knowledge workers, such as executives, managers, and analysts, to make better and faster decisions’ (Davenport, 2006).
Every company faces the 'buy vs make decision' on whether to do digital marketing in-house or outsource it to a digital marketing agency. Many businesses are skeptical of choosing to outsource their marketing and one reason may be due to the fact that the company doesn't believe that the agency has specific enough knowledge on their industry or area of work. The truth is that agencies are heading towards real-time delivery models that are built into their workflow (Skyworld, 2012). At ‘Group Fashion’, the mission is to clean the client's data and present it on a real-time dashboard accessible to the client at any moment. The agency specializes in the fashion industry and uses BI to do the dirty work that you never have to see. The only job of the client is to draw conclusions on the visualized data presented by the agency. The north star metric of Group Fashion is similar to Netflix in that they want to help you make an informed decision in less than 60 seconds from what is presented on your dashboard.
Analyzing shopping behavior, increasing brand loyalty, enhancing the shopping experience, and providing a degree of personalized shopping experience are all areas that can be improved through the use of business intelligence. At the end of the day, companies want to keep their customers for as long as possible and increase sales. For more information, see how BI helps fashion companies optimize their channels.
Fashion companies that are struggling to implement business intelligence effectively into their business are gradually losing their competitive edge. Fashion enterprises can gain a competitive advantage by adopting BI and using it in their business. This statement is supported by previous researchers which stated that a company's application of business intelligence is a potential source of competitive advantage and provides a specific competitive weapon (Elbashira, M. Z., Collierb, P. A., & Davern, M. J., 2008).
Keywords: business intelligence, fashion, data
References
Davenport, T.H., 2006. Competing on analytics. Harvard business review, 84(1), p.98.
Elbashir, M.Z., Collier, P.A. and Davern, M.J., 2008. Measuring the effects of business intelligence systems: The relationship between business process and organizational performance. International journal of accounting information systems, 9(3), pp.135-153.
Skyword (2012). The Digital Agency of the Future: New organizational structure, Skill & Technology Infrastructure (Available online) https://coolresourcesblog.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/21-resource_digital-agency-of-the-future-report-skyword1.pdf p. 10 (Last accessed: 06/02/21)
Business Intelligence and Reducing Waste in the Fashion Industry | Ruth Kelly
ReplyDeleteWaste is a significant problem across the fashion industry today. In the UK, up to £140m of clothing waste is destined for landfill each year, due mainly to overproduction (Bridgewater, 2019). Insightful Business Intelligence can help to increase a fashion brand’s Return on Investment through fostering intelligent production based on real time data and consumer insights.
Business Intelligence is helpful in predicting future buying patterns and behaviours amongst consumers (Accenture, 2012). This powerful data can help fashion brands to produce clothing that is highly relevant to its target audience; to reduce waste and production costs, to achieve better prices for their ranges, and to increase ROI.
While reducing waste will have a positive impact on profits and efficiencies, it can also have the dual effect of bolstering a fashion brand’s ‘green’ status. This can improve brand loyalty, and increase a fashion brand’s appeal amongst ethical fashion consumers.
· Bridgewater, A. “How Data Helps Fight Fashion Waste”. Available Online: https://www.forbes.com/sites/adrianbridgwater/2019/11/28/how-data-helps-fight-fashion-waste/?sh=59a8fab6393f [Accessed 7th February 2021]
· Accenture. “Business Intelligence for Fashion and Luxury” Available Online: https://www.accenture.com/cz-en/~/media/Accenture/Conversion-Assets/DotCom/Documents/Global/PDF/Industries_4/Accenture-Business-Intelligence-For-Fashion-And-Luxury.pdf {Accessed 7th February 2021]
The Utilisation of Business Intelligence within The Fashion Industry | Louise Grant
ReplyDeleteBusiness Intelligence (BI) is a technology that allows people from all levels of an organisation access reports on all past and present data. This technology processes data for the enterprise’s management, to advance in its performance and work more efficiently (Howson, 2013).
BI assists in the decision making on more data driven areas to help optimise the production volume and better understand past performance in different areas of the business.
By fashion brands embracing business intelligence (BI), this system gives insight into the consumers’ preferences and attributes which allows the business to forecast the performance of new items by measuring the similarity between products already marketed and prospective items, reducing significantly the amount of inventory that is not sold. Group Fashion relies on business intelligence to present, collect and store information on large volumes of data, in order to support the company’s success in the fashion industry.
References
Howson, C., (2013). Successful Business Intelligence, Second Edition. Emeryville: McGraw-Hill Publishing.