How to Leverage Advanced Analytics?

Hello everyone and welcome to Adastra’s GCP Podcast called “Mastering Google Cloud Made Easy”. Thank you for joining! My name is Ivaylo Dimitrov, and I am a Google Cloud Solution Architect at Adastra.

In today’s episode I will briefly explain to you how to leverage advanced analytics and get better at using data and insights on Google Cloud Platform.

I will bring spotlight to Google’s powerful data platform called Looker which helps users improve customer lifetime value, optimize store operations, and increase retail margins through actionable insights.

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OK, let’s dive in… Perhaps no industry relies more heavily on data than retail. Trend forecasting, inventory control, marketing strategy, customer behavior, and so on. This has only become truer over the past decade, as brick and mortar retailers invest more in digital offerings and ecommerce sites grow in outreach.

Today’s biggest retail trends are driven by data: Smart merchandising… or using multiple channels to meet your customers anticipating what they want to buy, when, and where. Hyper-personalization… or the understanding who your customers are and how they like to do shopping and help generate tailor-made offers and increase engagement. Real-time inventory and supply chain management… or leveraging smart applications and platforms and data analytics to manage complex supply chains and reduce costs.

How well retailers use their data has a direct impact on customer lifetime value and their overall financial success. Especially in turbulent economic times, data can be key to understanding, navigating, and solving new challenges.

The question is how Google Cloud can help you solve them through a modern digital strategy. Offering much more than dashboards and reports of traditional business intelligence tools, Looker delivers a powerful data platform that lets you get the right data to the right people. Anytime. At any device. Using Looker to build data experiences can help you: Integrate insights and analytics with the applications you use every day; Build a 360-degree view of your customers and their journey; Use Artificial Intelligence to craft recommendations and deliver better customer services; Analyze customer interactions; Have near real-time visibility into inventory levels; And tear down the data silos.

I will give you key points to consider as you develop new data experiences and offer recommendations for ways you can leverage a Looker instance to drive competitive advantages. And thanks to Looker Blocks—a set of pre-built pieces of code for everything from optimized SQL patterns to fully built-out data models—you can seamlessly deploy new Looker use cases quickly.

Retailers have a long history of using data for inventory and supply chain management, but the way that data is used, and the pace with which is generated, has changed radically. Weekly or monthly inventory analysis have been replaced by minute-by-minute tracking of inventory and responsive supply chain management.

Here Looker comes in, effectively managing complex supply chains and optimizing inventory levels to drive operational efficiency and profitability. Looker connects directly to your database, tracking real-time movement of products, from source to customer and every stop in between.

You can effectively use your Looker instance to: Plan inventory purchase and warehouse to ensure availability; Send automatic alerts when stock level is high or low; Improve workflows by keeping warehouse and floor managers up-to-date on inventory numbers; Trace customer feedback and many more.

By integrating Looker with the applications, you are already using, you get ongoing visibility into inventory and the entire supply chain without requiring the intervention of any analyst.

You will have the tools you need for nimble decision-making, fast response, and more efficient flows of goods and services.

Now, let’s describe a couple of valuable Looker blocks. The first one is “Recommendations”.  It helps you build a better data picture of your inventory and supply chain with ready-to-deploy dashboards and customizable features.

The Retail block helps you transform existing stock data into a real-time inventory management system. It can also help you analyze over- and under- stocked items to improve future orders. If you are already using Google BigQuery as a data warehouse, Looker’s Retail Block offers the opportunity to run predictive analysis for smarter forecasting.

“Scheduling Data Deliveries” is a feature that helps your team to keep the right items in stock. You can use scheduling to automatically send custom inventory reports to store managers or partners as often as you would like.

Data can be delivered via emails or a webhooks, Google Drive, Slack, or another integrated service.

OK, let us come to a conclusion. As a retailer, you hold a large amount of data, from sales records to marketing metrics, inventory movement, and financial statements. And Looker sits on top of all, integrating information from multiple platforms and channels to give you deep, actionable insights into all aspects of your operations.

You should get the most the most pause value possible from your Looker instance by employing new, innovative use cases. Discover new ways to benefit from the data you have – attract and retain customers, optimize your marketing spends across channels, monitor inventory in real-time, and better manage the complex supply chains.

Consider monetizing retail data while incorporating ready-to-deploy Looker Blocks and other powerful features to help you get it done quickly and thrive in today’s fast-moving retail landscape.

Well, that is all for today’s episode of “Mastering Google Cloud Made Easy”. Thank you for joining and I hope you got some important takeaways on how to leverage advanced analytics and get better business insights.

Make sure you subscribe to our channel to always stay tuned with the latest insights we share. Join us again next time when you will find out how to perform a cost-effective Google Cloud migration. Goodbye and stay safe.