The Moodie Insights column: 50 shades of grey

Moodie Insights is a joint-venture company formed at the beginning of 2018, and the latest addition to the Moodie Davitt family. It aims to bring a greater level of insight and informed decision-making to commercial leaders within the global travel retail and food & beverage sectors. Click here for an introduction to Moodie Insights.

Craig Mackie, the General Manager of Moodie Insights, has worked for over 20 years in senior commercial and marketing roles, within large multi-national companies such as Diageo and GlaxoSmithKline. In this, the first in a series of columns, he explores how technology is changing our world, and explains how Moodie Insights can leverage your data effectively. 

Craig Mackie: How Moodie Insights helps companies understand the drivers of growth.

Deep down most of us have some concerns that one day our livelihood will be replaced with gleaming metallic robots, just like those shiny ones from the Terminator movies, writes Craig Mackie. Tuned for efficiency and perfect execution, their cutting-edge technology can complete the day job of a small army in a matter of minutes.

It was in a situation facing a close friend of mine where the daunting realisation of this technological advancement first gripped me. She was nearing the end of years of medical training to become a radiologist. She had behind her a decade of undergraduate studies, medical school and a subsequent residency programme. Suddenly her noble chosen profession was at risk of being replaced by a new era of artificial intelligence ‘robots’.

An evolution in the speed, accuracy and cost effectiveness of Medical Imaging allowed ‘shades of grey’ that would be imperceptible to any human eye to be detected and diagnosed with no human intervention.

It was a huge concern. And she certainly wasn’t alone in fearing what the future might hold. To quote Professor Geoffrey Hinton (A.I. Versus M.D): “I think that if you work as a radiologist you are like Wile E. Coyote in the cartoon. You’re already over the edge of the cliff, but you haven’t yet looked down. There’s no ground underneath. It’s just obvious that in five years (it might be ten) deep learning is going to do better than radiologists.”

How can we recognise which of these customer segments and occasions are most important? And what is the best way to engage shoppers on these missions in a manner that resonates? How do we get clear on the objective; whether we are trying to drive footfall into store or increase average spend?

While there is no doubt that disruptive and rapid change has arrived for our progressive radiologist friends, there is light, hope and an abundance of opportunity at the end of the tunnel.

The reality, as in many industries, is that we will see a progressive shift in technology and the capabilities required to harness it.

The next generation of radiologists will, in fact (among vast other skills) be Advanced Analytic and Data Intelligence experts.

Technology will enable them to spend more of their time engaging patients, communicating results and with some luck wrapping up their day satisfied after another successful week of meeting patient KPIs, saving lives – and delivering on departmental budgets!

“The real challenge is that for many of us, we have an abundance of data, but it can be both challenging and costly to integrate into our daily operations,” said Craig Mackie at FAB 2018.

So, what is the relevance to our business? Well, the reality is that the same (or similar) change is at our doorstep. Technology advancement in many areas of the retail landscape offers potential to do our jobs faster, better and more cost-effectively than ever before.

For most physical retail and F&B business, human interaction and engagement remains a centre point for creating memorable experiences and loyal customers. Whether in travel retail, your local supermarket or in a food & beverage outlet, the staff provide a personalised experience that can never be replicated by robots or artificial intelligence programmes.

However, the role and potential of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in retail is vast, offering numerous avenues to develop new and innovative solutions. In areas such as Demand Planning, Customer Relationship Management, Logistics, Delivery and Payment the opportunities for innovation and productivity are immense.

At Moodie Insights our range of tools and services include Artificial Intelligence technology that can identify meaningful customer groups, product segments or even shopper missions: all derived from your data.

Marketing communication is one example. All of us would like to think we are reaching the “right customer” with the “right message” at the “right time”. However, achieving this should mean that we have a meaningful and logical approach to segmenting our customers into actionable groups.

Consider a business traveller in a travel retail environment. During her two hours within the airport, she may in fact have a variety of needs and occasions that she hopes to satisfy during her dwell time. These could range from buying a gift for a potential client to a treat for her kids she hasn’t seen all week, as well as maximising her duty free allowance on her favourite Scotch whisky.

How can we recognise which of these customer segments and occasions are most important? And what is the best way to engage shoppers on these missions in a manner that resonates? How do we get clear on the objective; whether we are trying to drive footfall into store or increase average spend?

Creating customer segments can shape your marketing and promotional mechanics to be most effective. When you get it right, you will win customer engagement during critical dwell time and ultimately drive a greater share of spend.

However, creating meaningful customer segments is challenging and tedious work. Manually, it requires vast effort and resources to effectively isolate smaller clusters of shoppers or transaction types that have common characteristics, potentially over tens of millions of individual transactions.

Fortunately, pattern recognition is one of the distinct strengths of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technology. Where the right tools are applied, technology now can enable us to isolate useful clusters of shoppers or buying behaviour that may previously have eluded human perception.

TFWA digital village 2017
Visit The Moodie Davitt Report and Moodie Insights teams at The TFWA Digital Village (DA8) in Cannes next week.

This means that we can spend more time ensuring that we develop, execute and test new customer engagement ideas versus spending weeks or months just trying to wrangle data to a clear conclusion. And, if harnessed correctly, these technologies when applied can deliver better performance outcomes, stronger plans, better execution, increased customer satisfaction and motivated teams.

At Moodie Insights our range of tools and services include Artificial Intelligence technology that can identify meaningful customer groups, product segments or even shopper missions: all derived from your data.

The Moodie Insights team can then use time-motion sequencing to clearly illustrate and visualise behaviour shifts through every minute of the day.  In essence creating a ‘digital fingerprint’ to isolate critical trading patterns that exist in your business.

We can also apply predictive analytics to understand the impact of changes. Moodie Insight tools simply enable commercial insights to be gathered, understood and actioned more efficiently than ever before.

This new future should be compelling and exciting to all of us. It means a world where we have rapid access to meaningful insights that guide decisions. More time executing than analysing. Better decisions that provide a more engaging customer experience.

Technology can help to shape the strategy and insights, enabling our teams to focus more energy on implementation and execution.

It is in our ability to adapt to the changing technological landscape and pioneer the application to our industry that the potential for innovation and growth become most exciting.

*Moodie Insights General Manager Craig Mackie will attend Cannes next week; visit our stand in the Digital Village (DA8) or to arrange a meeting in advance contact:

craig@moodieinsights.com
+66 994 301 761
www.moodieinsights.com

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