Future of e‑commerce will be created by companies that put people at the centre of their data

David Ogilvy, hailed as the father of adver­tis­ing, was a man who under­stood the impor­tance of research and data. “Adver­tis­ing peo­ple,” he wrote, “who ignore research are as dan­ger­ous as gen­er­als who ignore decodes of ene­my sig­nals.” Ogilvy lived at a time when data was more dif­fi­cult and more cost­ly. But these are not Ogilvy’s times – we are flood­ed with data; what we lack is a way of under­stand­ing sig­nal from noise.

Design Think­ing gives us a frame­work for clear­ly see­ing and pro­cess­ing this sig­nal, and it does this by focus­ing on the sin­gu­lar thing that busi­ness­es have in com­mon – peo­ple.

Using Design Think­ing, com­pa­nies can analyse their data in two sig­nif­i­cant ways: first­ly, com­pa­nies are required to view their busi­ness from the inside out – from their cus­tomers’ point-of-view; and sec­ond­ly it mit­i­gates risk by design­ing and test­ing poten­tial futures through pro­to­typ­ing.

Fre­quent­ly, com­pa­nies use their data to answer one sim­ple ques­tion, “What hap­pened and how often?” But this fails to answer anoth­er sim­ple ques­tion, “Why”. Con­se­quent­ly, this analy­sis won’t tell them why cus­tomers failed to adopt their ser­vice or why their exist­ing cus­tomers have stopped using it. The only peo­ple who know the answer to this ques­tion are their cus­tomers.

In-depth qual­i­ta­tive research into their cus­tomers’ behav­iour and expec­ta­tions will help them find unmet needs. And it’s in these unmet needs where we find oppor­tu­ni­ties for inno­va­tion.

The UK, as a French­man once said, is a nation of shop­keep­ers. The gro­cery busi­ness may be the most tra­di­tion­al of indus­tries, but it’s ripe for dis­rup­tion. And that’s no sur­prise as this is an indus­try that’s clos­er to its cus­tomers than most.

Most recent­ly, super­mar­kets in the UK have moved to same-day deliv­ery, not just to com­pete with Ama­zon, but because their data told them that cus­tomers’ behav­iour was chang­ing. Cus­tomers were mov­ing away from larg­er in-store shops towards more fre­quent small­er shops.

Over the past two years, we’ve seen that super­mar­ket cus­tomers are increas­ing­ly look­ing past price and are plac­ing more val­ue on con­ve­nience. Con­ve­nience for these cus­tomers means a bet­ter qual­i­ty ser­vice for less effort. “I real­ly strug­gle to find the time to do my shop­ping, but I just want my gro­ceries deliv­ered,” says one super­mar­ket shop­per.

And for gro­cery shops this could look like a sub­scrip­tion-based ser­vice. If super­mar­kets know from their quan­ti­ta­tive data that their cus­tomers buy the same items every week, why don’t they auto­mat­i­cal­ly deliv­er these to the cus­tomer with­out the cus­tomer hav­ing to vis­it the web­site and check out every time?

The super­mar­ket could send the cus­tomer a sim­ple noti­fi­ca­tion ask­ing them if they want their week­ly deliv­ery, or addi­tions, and then allow the cus­tomer to track their deliv­ery from store to door in real-time.

By plac­ing cus­tomers at the cen­tre of their data col­lec­tion and analy­sis, com­pa­nies can gain a more round­ed pic­ture of their cur­rent busi­ness and their poten­tial future by iden­ti­fy­ing unmet needs.

It may be trans­form­ing how com­pa­nies under­stand and con­duct their busi­ness, but big data is incom­plete with­out a sol­id under­stand­ing of cus­tomer behav­iour. Ogilvy would be astound­ed by the trans­for­ma­tive effect it has had on busi­ness. But you won­der how he would feel about the dis­tanc­ing effect that data has had on busi­ness-to-con­sumer and even busi­ness-to-busi­ness rela­tion­ships.

Big data that fails to include or ignores human data cre­ates a gap of under­stand­ing between com­pa­nies and their cus­tomers. And this gap is impor­tant as with­in this gap lies busi­ness­es’ abil­i­ty to meet emerg­ing cus­tomer needs. It’s with­in this gap that star­tups find their foothold and grow to become sig­nif­i­cant com­peti­tors.

Using Design Think­ing to under­stand and action big data can help busi­ness­es move for­ward with more focus and more con­fi­dence. And, most impor­tant­ly, all busi­ness­es have access to this invalu­able data resource – their cus­tomers.

Each&Other is an award-win­ning user expe­ri­ence con­sul­tan­cy that uses Design Think­ing to solve com­pli­cat­ed busi­ness prob­lems. With clients such as Google, Citibank and Zurich Inter­na­tion­al, we help organ­i­sa­tions bring inno­v­a­tive ser­vices to mar­ket

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it hello@eachandother.com