INDIA/INTERNATIONAL. Voiceback Technologies, a company led by former Flemingo Travel Retail CEO Manishi Sanwal, is building a presence in travel retail through new data analytics services for airports, retailers and brands. As reported, Sanwal left Flemingo in 2019 to pursue this new venture.
The company said its solutions generated through customer and data analysis include depletion analytics, dynamic promotions development, basket assessment to optimise store layouts; predictive analysis to help develop loyalty programmes; evaluating the impact of in-store events; logistics analysis and sales forecasting.
Speaking to The Moodie Davitt Report, Sanwal said its technology can help travel retailers in particular to connect with and promote tailored campaigns and offers to travellers through their phones (with an SMS message).
“There is a lot of data out there that is unused,” said Sanwal. “Some duty free websites have thousands of visitors per day but how do we convert them to shoppers? The Dynamic Promotions bridge we have developed is a perfect solution.
“With the help of the retailer, through a special form we get their passport number, travel data and their shopping history. This allows us to profile the passenger on the basis of their historical spends. Subsequently, we can tailor relevant offers to them based on this history in real time and send to them through SMS.
“It’s a form of dynamic promotion that can translate quickly to deliver a meaningful uplift to the business. People have to agree to share their information of course but many passengers are interested in and actively seek out personalised offers and special deals that can be redeemed in the store or online.”
With Mumbai Duty Free, an early partner, Sanwal said that as many as 30% of website visitors filled in the relevant form to be contacted about promotions. The promotions are delivered on SMS and passengers can redeem it through the retailer’s web shop. It has led to a significant increase in online transactions, said Sanwal.
“We target people by relevant spending amounts,” he added. “If they spend US$100, we aim to lift that to US$150.”
The company has clients in the Indian downtown market and is now intent on growing its presence in travel retail. Sanwal said the tools could be of use to all parties in the industry Trinity.
Another service is depletion analytics. Voiceback noted that while brands have good data on volumes and net sales, there is a lack of uniformity in data and reporting structures across airports. The company proposes an overarching data structure for reporting depletion data across all of a brand’s locations, which can be tailored to time periods, locations, different SKUs and other metrics.
The company said that it can help partners explore “business opportunities, solve problems and devise strategies for future growth from the same data, through a deep dive and higher order analysis.”
A key element, said Sanwal, is that Voiceback can gauge how particular SKUs respond to promotional mechanics across a series of measures. “We run regressions on sales data to assess the sensitivity of different promotions. We are able to pinpoint which SKUs would respond to a promotion and which ones would not respond. It helps brands in planning their promotions to maximise their sales. It also helps to remove the noise of other influences such as seasonality, pack sizes and so on. We are already working with key brands and brand groups on this product.”
He concluded: “We are buoyed by what the future will hold. With a strong and capable back-end technology team and early success, we now want to scale up our operation across the globe and add value to the travel retail Trinity. With depletion data analytics for brands and our Dynamic Promotion Bridge for the operators, we have developed two very successful products in a short time. 2020 will be a good year.”
