The outcome of this executive workshop had identified four recommendations for the retail industry: • Understanding the pain points and identifying the right use cases • Demonstrating the value and gaining the leadership commitment • Developing enterprise wide capabilities to increase the business impact • Taking small steps to solve the pain points by validating the value

1. PRACTICAL INSIGHTS
OF THE RETAIL
EXECUTIVES ON
ANALYTICS DRIVEN
RESILIENT BUSINESS
GROWTH
Conclusions paper

2. INTRODUCTION
One year into the pandemic, it has become clear that no one can idly wait for things to go back to
the way they were. Customer expectations are changing at an unprecedented speed, and businesses
are responding by redesigning their operations.
Resilience and future-readiness become essential in the reality we are in. The disruptions are
happening, and how we prepare for and withstand the next challenge, defines how we move
forward.
At the recent SAS virtual conference which gathered business and thought leaders from Central and
Eastern Europe, Middle East, Russia and Africa region; we painted a picture of the future, together
with different passionate communities, by using intelligent decisioning as the key driver of the growth
innovation.
As digital acceleration takes hold, the global retail and consumer goods community is adapting more
quickly than anyone ever thought possible.
Retailers are faced with new requirements in managing their demand and ensuring the supply of
essential and non-essential goods, as well as the challenges of managing their customer experiences,
both in-store and online.
Leading retail company executives have shared their experiences, discussed challenges and solutions
to be ready for the future. These executives agreed that organization and process transformation is
the main challenge among others in the retail industry.
Our gratitude goes to McKinsey, Utkonos Online, Yıldız Holding, Inter Cars S.A., Adamed Pharma
S.A. who were the Content Board members and supported the content creation for the Beyond
Tomorrow Executive Workshops.

3. CONTENTS
BUSINESS
VALUE
5
ORGANIZATION
AND PROCESS
8
ANALYTICS
TECHNOLOGY
11
Workshop Outcomes 4
BUSINESS VALUE 5
Challenges 6
Solutions 7
ORGANIZATION AND PROCESS 8
Challenges 9
Solutions 10
ANALYTICS TECHNOLOGY 11
Challenges 12
Solutions 13
Recommended Next Steps From The Pioneering Retail Executives 14

4. Recommended
next steps from
the pioneering
retail executives
Challenges Solutions
ANALYTICS
TECHNOLOGY
Challenges Solutions
Challenges Solutions ORGANIZATION
AND PROCESS
BUSINESS
VALUE
Workshop
Outcomes
WORKSHOP OUTCOMES
The outcome of this executive workshop had identified four recommendations for the retail industry:
• Understanding the pain points and identifying the right use cases
• Demonstrating the value and gaining the leadership commitment
• Developing enterprise wide capabilities to increase the business impact
• Taking small steps to solve the pain points by validating the value
We have structured the challenge and solution discussions of this retail executive workshop into business value, organization and process,
analytics technology categories.
TOPIC NAVIGATION
Business Value Organization and Process Analytics Technology
Challenges
Low visibility of targets
Low relevancy of use cases
Low impact of outcomes
Weak analytics governance
Low leadership confidence
Limited solution scalability
High data regulations
Limited data sources
Low data readiness
Solutions
Portfolio value optimization
Business line ownership
Continuous value validation
New cross capabilities
Small step execution
Impactful result delivery
Current available data
Analytics platforms
Decisioning automation
Business Value Organization and Process Analytics Technology Case Studies

5. BUSINESS
VALUE
Conclusions paper

6. Recommended
next steps from
the pioneering
retail executives
Challenges Solutions
ANALYTICS
TECHNOLOGY
Challenges Solutions
Challenges Solutions ORGANIZATION
AND PROCESS
BUSINESS
VALUE
Workshop
Outcomes
Low visibility of targets
Uncertainty forces retail companies to adapt to
changing conditions very fast to stay
competitive in the market. This adaption may
result in frequent strategy adjustments and
business target revisions. According to
McKinsey, the pandemic has already altered
consumer purchasing behaviors in deep and
perhaps lasting ways. Significant
macroeconomic, commercial, and cost shifts
are changing the landscape for retailers.
Business review meetings done annually,
quarterly or even monthly may become
insufficient to communicate business targets to
the operating teams.
Low relevancy of use cases
A use case is a methodology to transform
business requirements into technology
requirements for solution development that
supports the achievement of business targets.
Use cases may solve business problems and
generate tangible results. These use cases
when considered standalone may not relevant
to the greater business challenges or may
complicate the resolution of greater business
challenges with a higher degree of integration.
Low impact of outcomes
The business cases can promise tangible
return on investment calculations and the
successful delivery of the use cases can
demonstrate the promised business value to
the stakeholders. Business value may be
interpreted differently by various teams.
Stakeholder value may not be the same as the
shareholder value or the value generated may
not be sufficient to meet the expectations of
the shareholders. Outcomes even they are
strong if not linked to shareholder expectations
may have a low impact.
CHALLENGES

7. Recommended
next steps from
the pioneering
retail executives
Challenges Solutions
ANALYTICS
TECHNOLOGY
Challenges Solutions
Challenges Solutions ORGANIZATION
AND PROCESS
BUSINESS
VALUE
Workshop
Outcomes
Portfolio value optimization
The portfolio approach aligns the expectations
of the shareholders with the needs of the
business units. Strategic objectives and
shareholder value metrics are obtained from
the CFO office while the problems and the use
cases are collected from the business units.
Use case roadmap is transformed into a use
case portfolio and return on investment
calculations of standalone use cases are
transformed into a portfolio value optimization.
This approach ensures the selection of the
right use cases to have a high business impact.
Business line ownership
Analytics technologies have a profound impact
on business innovation by creating intelligence.
This profound impact translates into greater
analytics investments both in terms of talent
and technology capabilities. Business line
teams own the business processes and the
business results. Therefore business teams
have the main responsibility to define and to
manage the use cases with the support of
analytics and technology teams. Business line
teams also collaborate with digital
transformation teams to make the cultural
change happen for a resilient retail business.
Continuous value validation
Business case calculations are based on
strategic objectives and business assumptions.
Changes in market conditions may also change
these defined strategies and assumptions.
A strong financial management system for use
cases ensures the validity of business case
calculations and the optimized value of the use
case portfolio. Continuous value validation is a
financial control system to have a greater
business impact. The balance of the use cases
in the portfolio may change as a result of this
value validation.
SOLUTIONS

8. ORGANIZATION
AND PROCESS
Conclusions paper

9. Recommended
next steps from
the pioneering
retail executives
Challenges Solutions
ANALYTICS
TECHNOLOGY
Challenges Solutions
Challenges Solutions ORGANIZATION
AND PROCESS
BUSINESS
VALUE
Workshop
Outcomes
Weak analytics governance
Analytics is an area that collects data from
multiple sources, generates insights and
actions for business professionals to make right
and timely decisions. Business teams respond
to the market demands, analytics teams
develop mathematical models, and technology
teams keep the systems functioning. The
cultures, objectives and the processes of these
three teams might be different and might not
be fully aligned. Analytics strategy, integrated
process framework and organization structure
might not be sufficient to support strategic
business objectives.
Low leadership confidence
Business leaders have the responsibility to
meet shareholder expectations by executing
the strategies and delivering the results.
Analytics investments may not deliver the
business results that they promise to deliver
due to various reasons. Mutual understanding
and alignment of business value definitions,
business case assumptions and calculations,
required talent and technology capabilities,
project management methodologies,
changing market and business environment
may have an impact on leadership confidence
and commitment.
Limited solution scalability
Analytics solutions solve business problems
and deliver results when timely deployed,
tested, scaled, managed and maintained.
Limited solution scalability arises when the
focus and the efforts are put more on data
management and model development
processes. Solution scalability becomes a
major issue when the analytical models
developed take more time than expected to
be deployed and scaled for wider business
execution. The real business value depends on
the effective management and maintenance of
analytical models for supporting the business
decisions.
CHALLENGES

10. Recommended
next steps from
the pioneering
retail executives
Challenges Solutions
ANALYTICS
TECHNOLOGY
Challenges Solutions
Challenges Solutions ORGANIZATION
AND PROCESS
BUSINESS
VALUE
Workshop
Outcomes
New cross capabilities
A retail capability development program helps
business, analytics and technology teams to
understand the strategic business objectives
better by creating a common language, culture
and management system. This results in easier
forecast and control on both the supply and
demand side of the business. This program
supports retail companies in transforming the
organization to become a data-driven
company, increases the efficiency and
effectiveness of the talent and technology
investments to maximize the business value
with economies of scale.
Small step execution
Small step execution defines the required
steps to solve strategic business problems.
They can be thought of as quick wins that are
linked with the strategic problems. Quick wins
that are not linked to the strategic problems
may not demonstrate financial value even if
they create value on their own. These small
steps provide visibility to the problem-solving
process and a control point for the leadership
team to validate the business value. Small step
execution requires the right combination of
design thinking, agile development and lean
production methodologies for value creation.
Impactful result delivery
Delivering results is a shared responsibility of
business, analytics and technology teams. New
organization models with new process
frameworks are required to increase the
business impact of analytics. Analytics Center
of Excellence (CoE) is a new type of
organization where business, analytics and
technology teams work together to deliver
business results with high impact. Analytics
CoE is an innovation organization that changes
prototypes into growth solutions, multiple
business functions into portfolio businesses,
standalone process improvements into
end-to-end process optimizations.
SOLUTIONS

11. ANALYTICS
TECHNOLOGY
Conclusions paper

12. Recommended
next steps from
the pioneering
retail executives
Challenges Solutions
ANALYTICS
TECHNOLOGY
Challenges Solutions
Challenges Solutions ORGANIZATION
AND PROCESS
BUSINESS
VALUE
Workshop
Outcomes
High data regulations
Regional and local regulations on data
collection, data storage and data sharing make
the analytics analytics-driven transformation
difficult. The low breadth and depth of
available data may decrease the success of
analytics solutions as a result of customers that
do not provide consent. Data storage
regulations decrease the cloud adoption,
impact the scalability of databases and limit
the cost and risk reduction. Lack of cross-
company and cross-industry data sharing
decreases the richness of data and therefore
the completeness of insights for better
decisions.
Limited data sources
High street retail is still based on physical
presence where the availability of digital data is
much lower than online retail where all the
data is digital. Online and offline integration
may become an issue when digital data
availability is low and data resides in multiple
internal systems. Integration of multiple
external data sources may create additional
complexity and workload on connectivity
infrastructure, synchronization, automation and
control efforts. Model development and model
training might be impacted due to limited data
availability.
Low data readiness
Data quality is one of the critical success
factors of analytics solutions. The correctness
and the completeness of data define the
reliability and the accuracy of the analytical
models that generate better decisions. The
data preparation process that transforms the
raw data into complete data for model
development and the model deployment
process that makes the model available for
business teams to be used for decisioning
require a significant amount of time. The
validity of data and analytical models may be
eroded during this overlong data management
process.
CHALLENGES

13. Recommended
next steps from
the pioneering
retail executives
Challenges Solutions
ANALYTICS
TECHNOLOGY
Challenges Solutions
Challenges Solutions ORGANIZATION
AND PROCESS
BUSINESS
VALUE
Workshop
Outcomes
Current available data
The objective of analytics solutions in retail is
to transform the data into decisions at the right
time. Retail is an industry where the seconds
matter in terms of making the right decisions.
Accelerating the analytics model development
with the available data creates a continuous
learning environment for the teams to improve
the analytics model development by collecting
additional data in time. Agility can be gained
by integrating data management, model
development, model deployment and
decisioning into a single iterative analytics
incubation process.
Analytics platforms
Data and analytics technologies are being
significantly improved and become more
cost-effective with the recently included
capabilities. Enterprise grade analytics
platforms integrate data management, model
development, model deployment and
decisioning capabilities into one technology
platform that was previously provided by
standalone tools. These analytics platforms not
only integrate these technology capabilities to
save integration efforts, but also provide end
to end process optimization framework to
make the teams for agile and effective.
Decisioning automation
Staying innovative and competitive in the retail
industry requires fast response and adaptation
to the market changes. Recent advancement in
data and analytics technologies has been
improving customers’ shopping experience
and retailers’ competitive position in the
market. Automation of decisions in retail
operations is required to cope with the pace of
market changes to survive and to stay
competitive. Decisioning automation is the
ultimate goal of analytics solutions and it is
already embedded into the agile process
optimization framework.
SOLUTIONS

14. Recommended
next steps from
the pioneering
retail executives
Challenges Solutions
ANALYTICS
TECHNOLOGY
Challenges Solutions
Challenges Solutions ORGANIZATION
AND PROCESS
BUSINESS
VALUE
Workshop
Outcomes
This paper is prepared to provide a clear direction and guidance to the retail executives to stay resilient and competitive during unprecedented times.
1. Establish the Analytics Center of Excellence (AcoE) as the portfolio value management office – Analytics Center of Excellence is an organization of
business, analytics and technology teams and has the responsibility to optimize the portfolio value of all analytics solutions.
2. Utilize the enterprise analytics platform as the retail innovation platform – Enterprise analytics platform is an end-to-end integrated agile process
optimization technology where company teams, startups, spinouts, solution providers and academia can work collaboratively to innovate.
3. Setup an Analytics Academy as the cultural change program – Analytics is a transformative technology that needs behaviour changes in people
and process changes in businesses to deliver high-impact results and to create shareholder value. It is a change management method to create a
common language and a common objective among all teams.
Please contact us to get more information on SAS Retail Transformation.
RECOMMENDED NEXT STEPS FROM THE
PIONEERING RETAIL EXECUTIVES

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