As artificial intelligence continues to appear as the silver bullet to success for companies, tech firms are now using this trend and technology to break into non-tech sectors.
Tampa-based CCG Analytics, a data and analytics firm with a focus on retail, launched their Customer Intelligence, or CI for Retail, at the Shop Talk conference in Las Vegas Monday.
CI Retail is a platform that allows retailers to tackle a slew of issues including customer acquisition and retention, reviewing business insights and allowing reliable customer data to be extended throughout an entire organization.
"It helps build trust that they have access to something that's straightforward and easy to use," Dan Rodriguez, chief product and strategy officer for CCG said. "And the coolest part we've seen, which is not intended, is while we were targeting for marketing, they benefited from understanding the customer. It influenced the supply chain; where they put stores, where they made retail store locations. So there's a lot of knowledge the rest of the enterprise is getting and that's definitely unique."
Preppy clothing and lifestyle brand Vineyard Vines was one of the early adopters toward the end of 2017, which reported 150 percent return on investment after using CI to better understand customer buying behaviors and using that knowledge to create more personalized campaigns. For example, data gathered by CI Retail showed executives that women were buying items for men or children, but not themselves. Officials then used that knowledge to mail an offer exclusively for women's products, which drove more traffic per mailed piece than the 2018 average.
“This is illustrative of what can be discovered by opening up visibility into consumer behavior,” Chris Fitzpatrick, vice president of business analytics and strategy at Vineyard Vines, said in a statement. “The ability to unlock a more granular understanding of Vineyard Vines customers and support more personalized campaign development represented an ROI of over 150 percent in the first year of the platform being operationalized.”
Rodriguez believes the key to success when it comes to businesses, especially mid-market size adopting AI, is ensuring the entire company understands and is involved in the process.
"They know they want answers and that they're blind in certain areas and they want to be easy and very quick," he said. "You can involve the entire business from the get-go. It's not an IT project. And you help them speak the language — one of the things we pride ourselves on is to be the translator. Be the thing the communicator can connect upon."
As the company continues to grow, Rodriguez plans to keep his headquarters put in the Bay area and believes the company will eventually be joined with like-minded businesses.
"We’re seeing a lot more organizations move here that are tech-based and they're having a lot of success," he said. "We know from talent acquisition side market has gotten more competitive. We’re seeing better quality students come out of local universities. I absolutely think we’re going to be a major tech hub."
