Are your tried-and-tested models not delivering the expected outcomes? Are you finding some elements of your strategy are just not working out? Over the last few years, many forward-looking companies have been setting and implementing data strategies. This has been based on the proof that those who do invest and excel in data have seen significantly higher profitability and success than those who did not.
The advent of Covid-19 has only served to exaggerate the gap between the data haves and have-nots, even in relatively unaffected sectors. But even those who can claim to be leaders are now experiencing difficulties and a gap between their expectations and reality.
So, what has changed? Firstly, in many cases, the most valuable/useful data a company had to answer business-critical questions was internal - customer, employee, process and systems data. These enabled an organisation to understand how it worked, who did what, how customers behaved. Using these data sources, analysts and data scientists have been able to drive decisions, advise on actions to take and predict the future.
Models would identify sales opportunities, segment customers, predict churn, identify cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, forecast campaign response rates and model the risk of non-payment. All of this was based on previous behaviour, blended with business knowledge, competitive intelligence and real-time contextual data.
Customer behaviour has changed or been changed
But something has gone wrong. Customers’ past behaviour and buying habits can no longer be relied on to predict what they will do next. In the grocery sector, for example, the big weekly shop is back and people buy for vulnerable others outside of their household. Meanwhile, product ranges and selection options have been reduced to protect the supply chain. In non-food retail, people who have never shopped online before are now part of a major upshift in digital buying. Leisure and transport has been turned on its head - who knows when we will be able to fly abroad safely for a holiday?
All of this has a major impact on the main attributes that featured in reports, analysis, models or segmentations, such as:
Think how much these features of existing models have changed over the last three months. Some 8.4 million consumers who had a decent job with good wages are now on Government furlough support and may end up on income support when this scheme tapers off. “Digital nevers” have had their eyes opened to a new world due to enforced isolation, using online shopping, Zoom and WhatsApp for the first time and may keep this behaviour post lockdown.
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