Can business analytics boost retail, wholesale sector competitiveness?

The government seems to think so and will spend $5.3m developing business analytics infrastructure for both sectors.

The InfoComm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) said these business analytics services, which will be rolled out starting mid 2013, will enhance enterprises’ capabilities in Customer & Marketing Analytics, Inventory Optimisation and Operations Analytics.

"Enterprises in the retail and wholesale sectors can look forward to a comprehensive suite of business analytics shared services to enhance their competitiveness," said IDA, adding that the business analytics services will be deployed on shared infrastructure. 

"Through this initiative, IDA hopes to lower enterprises’ cost of adoption, shorten implementation time and make available analytics services on tap by the retail and wholesale sectors. Applied to the vast amount of transaction data that retailers have accumulated over time, these analytics services will allow them to derive greater insights of their customers’ needs, improve service level, minimise inventory holding and increase overall operational efficiency," it said.

"Business Analytics is becoming a key competitive differentiator for companies and organisations. The pervasive use of infocomm has generated vast amount of data, which continues to grow rapidly over the years. By analyzing this data, companies can discover greater insights about their customers and operations and make data-driven, informed decisions to increase efficiency and improve profitability," it added.

Demand for such analytic services also spell significant opportunities for Singapore’s ICT industry and partners, according to IDC, with the worldwide Business Analytics market for software, hardware and services expected to reach US$123 billion by 2015.

"The Data & Analytics programme, including this CFC, will create analytics-related employment opportunities, up-skill Singapore-based ICT companies’ capabilities and help extend their analytics products and services to the regional market, thereby contributing to Singapore being a Data and Analytics Hub," said IDA. 

"Six user enterprises are participating in this initiative as early adopters. They are NTUC Link, NTUC Fairprice, NTUC Unity Healthcare, C K Tang, Best Denki and YG Marketing. These enterprises will work with the selected service providers to create ready-to-use analytics applications for different retail segments spanning grocery, consumer electronics and departmental stores. Subsequently, more enterprises can also benefit by subscribing to these analytics applications," it added.

"Three service providers have been selected through a Call-for-Collaboration (CFC) to provide these analytics services. The three service providers are Manthan Systems, CyanSYS and PracBiz. Manthan Systems, a retail analytics solutions provider, will develop Customer and Marketing Analytics to enable retailers to better appraise marketing campaign effectiveness and understand their customers’ purchase pattern and trends. Through Inventory Optimisation, CyanSYS will enable retailers and their suppliers to improve demand forecasting, resulting in inventory efficiency and cost savings. PracBiz will enhance its B2B supply chain solutions to provide Operations Analytics shared services for SME suppliers to increase their productivity through optimisation of resources and business processes," it said further.

“IDA has identified Data and Analytics as a strategic focus area, and aims to develop Singapore into an international Data and Analytics Hub. We take an integrated approach in catalysing the growth & competiveness of key economic sectors through greater adoption of analytics, and strengthening our industry capabilities to capture the growing opportunities in global demand for Analytics services. This integrated approach involves seeding adoption, developing industry & manpower capabilities and putting in place scalable infrastructure,” said Mr Ronnie Tay, Chief Executive Officer of IDA. Besides retail & wholesale sectors, IDA’s initial efforts in Data & Analytics adoption will also cover other sectors such as healthcare, insurance, and food & beverage.