9 OCTOBER 2021for grocery essentials, coincidentally we were also rolling out a new reporting and analytics tool across our co-op. This allowed us to leverage our previous investment in SAP, which had enhanced our ability to collect real-time operational data, to create actionable insights where our customers needed it most. Listening to our customers, it soon became clear that our COVIDresponse would be best served by providing immediate answers to two key customer questions: "which store near me is the least busy?" and "does it have the items I want?"We responded by launching adigital queuing system for our customers, which we made available through both our New World brand's website and app. Providing real-time queuing data and subsequent trend analyses also enabled our teams to understand times of greatest demand and resource accordingly, supporting our staff and ultimately providing a better experience for our customers at a time of great stress and anxiety.Supporting our Christmas Loyalty Marketing CampaignAs New Zealand emerged from lockdown and returned to traditional shopping habits quicker than most, we were able to proceed with our annual Christmas loyalty marketing campaign for our New World brand whereby customers could redeem collected points (stickers) for quality giftware. This year, the giveaway was for premium SMEG knives.In 2019, when we ran a similar marketing campaign over the same period with Spiegelau glassware, we experienced challenges in certain areas matching supply with demand. Our efforts to enhance the customer experience at that time led to us conducting quasi-experimental causation analyses to estimate the impact of the campaign on customer activity.To do this we took our New World data (e.g., sales, baskets, etc.) and cross-referenced this with similar data from our other supermarket banners, PAK'nSAVE and Four Square, to work out what impact the campaign and its purchasing incentives were having on customer behaviours. This enabled us to glean an enhanced view of customer behaviours over the period of the campaign and use these insights to better plan for 2020's campaign.The success of this effort as a means of aligning supply and demand not only benefitted the efficacy of the promotion but reaffirmed to the business the centrality of data to our customer-driven future. Augmenting art with science, it was the wisdom that we extracted from the data that allowed us to tailor our collective response to customer demand for the free, premium giftware.Our data-driven future is also our customer-driven futureMost of us who work in the field of data and analytics would recognise that we're no longer working in a world where we're waiting for the technology to catch up with what we want it to do. Rather we need to catch up our organisations to the point we collectively understand and trust what the technology can provide.Our aspiration to become one of the most customer-driven retailers in the world is dependent upon us keeping the dial moving in two key areas ­ constantly maturing the organisational culture, underpinned by a commensurate maturity of data capabilities. This means that the better the alignment between those primarily working to drive culture change and those primarily working on maturing data and analytics capabilities, the better the outcomes for all involved will be. What we experienced through 2020 was a laser-like focus on responding to challenges that galvanised teams right across the business to improve customer experiences. Predictive analysis and machine learning will undoubtedly play an ever-increasing role in our future, but a priority for us at this stage of our data and analytics journey is not simply using more data, but on making the data use more meaningful for better customer experiences. Mazen KassisOur aspiration to become one of the most customer-driven retailers in the world is dependent upon us keeping the dial moving in two key areas ­ constantly maturing the organisational culture, underpinned by a commensurate maturity of data capabilities
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