Aimed at giving retail clients a competitive edge, Dash is a digital tool combining business data with AI to help make better commercial decisions. KPMG is making Dash accessible to UK clients without upfront fees – with plans to eventually expand its deployment beyond the retail sector.
Jonathan Attia, Head of Products at KPMG UK, commented, “In the retail sector the current extent of challenge and uncertainty means businesses are without a playbook. They need to understand the drivers of their business performance and have the right information to make critical decisions, like where to open new or consolidate an existing store portfolio, or which products are predicted to sell well. Dash gives retailers access to predictive analytics and powerful insights that help them better understand their business and gain a competitive edge by turning internal and external data into commercial insights, without requiring significant investment of money or time.”
Consumer spending power in the UK has hit historic lows over the last year, as employers refuse to raise salaries in line with the country’s record rates of inflation. Some studies suggest that this is seeing the UK retail scene miss out on £25 billion in discretionary spending alone – which has already pushed a growing number of operators in the sector to collapse.
Looking ahead, if retailers are to survive the current turmoil, they will need to leverage every possible opportunity available to them. To that end, Dash will enable retail businesses to convert their data into real insights about their performance, and improve commercial decision making about their customers, products and investments.
KPMG’s Dash platform is accessible 24/7, and combines business data with three billion external data points using AI algorithms, generating predictions and recommendations. This provides strategic insights across their store portfolio, allowing retailers to analyse their customers, catchments, forecasting, and competition.
The launch of dash coincides with research from KPMG and Ipsos Retail Think Tank, which has found that retailers battling with increased expenses are increasingly focussed on how to optimise costs and become more efficient operationally. But while nine-in-10 retailers claim analysing their business data is important, just 45% of decisions made in the sector are currently based on data. Dash could help change that, according to KPMG, by using data insights to help retailers make those decisions. For example, it can look at real estate costs and help identify where a retailer could open, close or refurbish a store.
Speaking on its launch, Paul Martin, UK Head of Retail at KPMG, noted, “Understanding customers is mission critical for retailers, and it’s a job that keeps getting harder. The cost of living crisis is driving different shopping behaviours, with some customers trading down from premium to budget brands while others are buying more premium goods in place of more costly experiences such as eating out. Data insights should be an intelligence source that is tapped into to interpret how buying patterns are changing and to guide decisions that respond, for example on the products to stock in each location and on the effectiveness of promotions.”
