This months Expert Speak comes from Karen Jackson, MD, CPM UK.
Sales analytics
At CPM UK, we’re leading the way in sales analytics by combining cutting edge analytics software, machine learning, artificial intelligence and our team of amazing data scientists to deploy the power of predictive analytics through our PREDICT solution.
Even today's fastest retail analytics teams are gathering data today, analysing it overnight, to drive actions and resource deployment the following day – and they call this dynamic.
We believe that however fast this is – your teams are still being forced to react to historical data… and if you are reacting, you’re missing valuable opportunities and not running a fully optimised team. To be truly optimised and drive the highest returns possible, you need to predict the future. Predictive analytics is nothing new, but with the data that’s now available and the technology that can support in analysing that data – we now have the perfect opportunity to use predictive analytics to drive optimal resource deployment for our clients.
Data Insight
Machine learning is a form of AI that enables our systems to learn from data rather than through explicit programming. However, machine learning is not a fully artificial intelligence-controlled process. Our human experts set the outcome required to solve a business problem and the machine then analyses all variables to create the best hypothesis (and algorithm), and as new data is added the system learns and increases accuracy.
For example, consider what drives sales in stores (outcome), machine learning will look at all variables including consumer density, stock availability and sales data to create a predicted algorithm. As more data is added over time the algorithm adapts and increases accuracy.
Put simply Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the ability of a machine to simulate human behaviour without the need for human input. This differs from machine learning by not requiring a human to intervene once set up. The machine thinks like a human by setting the business problem, building the machine learning models and then rolling them out.
This means that AI becomes your ‘analyst’, learning from data and making recommendations that can help to improve activity to grow your sales
Predictive analytics + liquid salesforce = sales uplift
With our considerable investment in PREDICT we can now help brands, retailers and any business harness the vast amount of Big Data to hand to create true insight in the form of predictive analytics. If you imagine a world where you can accurately predict when and where your next biggest opportunity (or risk) is going to occur and then deploy the right resource, be it human, digital or phygital to optimise that opportunity, in the most efficient way, then you have imagined CPM’s new predictive analytics and liquid salesforce solution. This ground-breaking solution will transform how businesses profitably sell, now and into the future.
Predict is now live and several of our customers are already benefiting from a considerable sales uplift through our integration of Predict with our field sales CRM and analytics solutions we that we have deployed for them today.
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