4 Steps to Creating a Successful Retail Dashboard

SUSAN: Good morning and good afternoon to you. On behalf of Stores Knowledge Series and Domo I would like to welcome you to today’s web seminar. My name is Susan Ratter, I’m the editor at Stores Media and I’ll be your host for this event. We’re excited to present today’s topic to you, ‘four steps to creating an effective retail dashboard.’ New information is cascading into retailers’ computers at a record pace. The biggest challenge is figuring out how to consume the data and translate it into better decision making. The right analytics approach can help retailers attract the most customers and retain existing customers. But how is this accomplished? The answer for an ever increasing number of retailers is an effective retail dashboard.

Let me take a minute to introduce our speakers. First I’d like to introduce Meaghan Cunningham, Customer Success Director for Retail at Domo. Meaghan has over a half decade experience in retail, most recently as the analytics manager at Bath Country.com where she was responsible for creating a comprehensive view of business performance. She specializes in business intelligence, analytics and visual, and data visualization for ecommerce and retail. Other recent experiences includes website content management, search engine optimization, email marketing and web analytics. I’d also like to introduce Chris Wintermeyer. With over two decade’s experience in technology and business process management, Chris has helped dozens of retailers globally develop and deploy business intelligence solutions that improve visibility and increase profitability. He specializes in business intelligence, analytics and data visualization helping executives make sense of data to drive better business outcomes. Chris is now leveraging his extensive background as Chief Advocate at Domo.

Before I hand the reins over to today’s speakers, I need to go through a few housekeeping items. First let me remind attendees that the audio portion of the webinar will stream right through your computer so there’s no need to dial into a phone line. Throughout the presentation you’ll be able to interact with the speakers through our question and answer capability. Please free to ask a question at any time during the presentation. Simply click on the question button on the left side of your web cast console and key in your query. I’ll receive those questions and read them to the speakers after they have all finished with their prepared remarks. We’ll respond to as many questions as possible during the Q & A session and we promise to have you back to work in no more than an hour. Also, you can enlarge the slides at any time by clicking on the square icon in the upper right corner of the slides. The slides will advance automatically so you don’t need to click anything to follow along with the presenters. At this time we also suggest that you turn off your pop up blocker if you’ve not already done so. And finally the archive of this presentation will be available for viewing for the next 12 months. So feel free to watch it again or refer it to a colleague. We’re excited you joined us today for what we hope will be a very informative web cast. Now let’s get started with the presentation. Chris.

CHRIS: Thank you, by the way you said one hour, I thought we had five hours because we’ve got like 198 slides to go through.

SUSAN: Oh absolutely five hours, whatever you think is going to work.

CHRIS: Yeah, well everybody out by dinner time is that good?

SUSAN: Sure, and you all have to still stay with us.

CHRIS: Yeah exactly, of course we will. No seriously thank you and by the way, I don’t know Meaghan if you noticed the picture in the upper left but that’s not the one that I thought we were going to have up there.

MEAGHAN: I know I’m sure you’re very disappointed.

CHRIS: I know I’m so disappointed. Anyway thank you gang for joining us today. What we want to do is talk to you today about the four steps to creating a successful retail dashboard and before we jump into it let’s talk a little bit about what is an effective dashboard. And by dashboard, what we’re talking about are metrics, or key performance indicators, what are typically referred to as KPI’s. These are the kind of things that one would see on the screen from Eloqua or Marketo or SAP or Sales Force or whatever the case might be. But what makes it effective? Really, for us, and Meaghan can speak more to this than I can because I’m the guy that has to sell it, she’s the person that actually has to make it happen, but an effective dashboard turns current insight into actionable data. By that what we mean is it’s not just about being able to connect into something and say “Hey we can pull back fifty or sixty metrics” but more importantly what are the metrics that actually relate to the business, what are the things that matter to what it is that we’re trying to accomplish, whether that’s increased revenue, whether that’s increased cost, whether that’s increased social sentiment, whatever the case might be, it’s all about being able to pull in the things that matter as they relate not just to your project but to the overall goals of the business. Meaghan anything you want to throw in there?

MEAGHAN: No, that’s exactly right and then having the metrics that relate to the goals but then also giving you the context into why you’re seeing the results that you’re seeing so, giving you information to see how you’re performing and then also giving you context to understand why those results are happening.

CHRIS: Exactly, and the other thing that I would add Meaghan, tell me if you think I’m wrong, but once we define what those metrics are that we should be looking at, somebody’s got to be accountable for those, we can’t just look at a gauge that’s turned red and say “Wow, that gauge is red, huh, I wonder what that problem with that is?” Somebody’s got to be able to say, “This is my problem I’m going to fix it” or “This is the thing that’s going really well, I’m going to push this out to the rest of the teams so that we can replicate it.”

MEAGHAN: Yeah, that’s a great point that accountability is key in terms of studying a dashboard, because a lot of times I think people just set up a chart or a graph and it looks nice, but then there’s not that ownership so people look at it but then nothing really happens from that.

CHRIS: Exactly, exactly. So actually on behalf of Domo we conducted a study of a little over 1,000 professionals in various businesses, it wasn’t just retail, it was a lot of different industries, it was retail of course, but it was also financial and health care and supply chain management and media and a bunch of others. Basically what we wanted to do was to ask “What are you looking at in terms of your business intelligence and more importantly, what is it that you’re lacking on a day to day basis?” And one of the things that we looked at was, 93% rely on the data to do their jobs well, in other words we asked people “Do you need data to actually be able to do your job?” Fortunately, 93% said yes. Frankly I was a little surprised that it wasn’t higher than that because [inaudible 00.07.44] 7% [JD1] of the people that responded are saying “Yeah you know what, it’s not about the data, I just kind of go on gut feel or I go on what’s happened in the past” or whatever the case it might be. And, in that same survey, a little over half said, they don’t have access to the data that they need, which basically says “I’m trying to do my job, but at least part of the data that I’m looking for to be able to answer the questions effectively or be able to run my corner of the store most efficiently, I don’t have access to.” And, only 20% of those respondents felt that the data they received adequately answers their questions.

So basically what that’s saying is, only one in five had the data that they needed to be able to go about their job effectively. So four in five were saying “Yeah I get some information but I’m still lacking in something that allows me to do my job as effectively as I could.” And the last part, which I think is very telling, 68% of respondents have difficulty on a regular basis making sense of their data, which basically shares two-thirds of the people get information but they don’t know what to do with it. Whether it’s because it’s out of date, whether it’s because they don’t understand what they’re looking at, or whether it’s because somebody told them that it meant one thing and it turns out it meant another, they don’t understand how to make that data work for them effectively. And this is, frankly, what we expected to see but not in the numbers that we expected to see, and Meaghan before we go into the first poll, anything that you want to comment on about that?

MEAGHAN:      No, I just agree, I mean this fits in perfectly with my experience with working with data and trying to be able to make decisions and understand how our business is performing. It was one of those things that you kind of knew what data you were looking for, but then actually getting your hands on it was really challenging. And, as exactly what you were talking about, sometimes it was available but it wasn’t available when I needed it, and then other times there were just all these different systems and one group had one bit of data and then trying to combine that with another data source. It was just very, very complicated and I come across this a lot with the customers that I work with here at Domo, that they absolutely experience the same thing, especially as there’s just so many different data sources out there that we’re relying on to do our jobs.

CHRIS: No exactly, that’s exactly right. So can we go to the first poll? Can we go to the first poll?

SUSAN: Okay the poll has consent.

CHRIS: And Susan I’m hoping, do we get to see that on the screen or should we just tap dance all of it, I’ve got my tap shoes so that’s okay.

SUSAN: You should be receiving some results shortly.

CHRIS: Okay perfect. So Meaghan, you and I know what the first call is, what we’re asking, but basically I’m just curious to see how many people identify with what it is that we’ve talked about, whether or not the data that they need, the information that’s important to them is available to them to do their jobs.

MEAGHAN: This is interesting yeah, because are you seeing the results?

CHRIS: Yeah, I am, it’s exactly what I expected to see. Is that what you expected to see Meaghan?

MEAGHAN: Yes, a lot of people look like they’re in line with what we saw in terms of having aspirations to have dashboards but not necessarily having some that are working for them just yet.

CHRIS: Exactly, and you know quite frankly I think one of the things that is interesting, which we’re not getting into too much in this particular discussion, but just because you have a dashboard doesn’t mean you have access to the right data. So can we go ahead and send the results out to the respondents so we can talk about it a little bit?

SUSAN: Okay I think they should be able to see it. Otherwise I’ll just walk them through those findings….

CHRIS: Yeah I was going to say. So I’m not sure if you guys are seeing it, and Meaghan feel free to jump in here, but basically these are the results that we expected to see, if you’re truly using a dashboard and using your data 20%, I’m sorry 29% were on the tail end saying “No that’s not at all what I was looking for,” 7% may have some access to some information. About half of you, a little bit less, 45.2% are saying “Yeah, I’ve got some access to the data that I need” and 8.1% actually have all the information that they need.

MEAGHAN: And this is the one where I always wish we could ask follow up questions.

CHRIS: I know right.

MEAGHAN: The people who answered “Yes but it’s designed poorly and not very useful” because my guess is that it would be for a lot of the reasons that we see in terms of having either too much data there and not knowing what to focus on or not having it be timely enough but yeah, I’m always interested to hear more about what’s not working for people.

CHRIS: Well exactly, and Meaghan you and I see this on a regular basis. So what are the things that we recommend as an organization and quite frankly in my 25 years of business intelligence, this is something that may seem obvious, a lot of people nod their heads when we talk about this, when we’re sitting in front of a group, but it really is a valuable thing to take an anonymous survey of the organization and I do mean anonymous because if you allow people to respond without identifying who they are but giving them the ability to respond with the answers that they feel are true and relevant to what they do on a daily basis.

The kind of questions you should be asking are “Do you have access to the information that you need, do you really get the data that you need,, want and have to have to be able to do your job effectively?” And also, does the data that you already have, have access in fact give them what you need to be able to increase revenue, to decrease costs, to improve sentiment, whatever the case is, whatever the business goals are for the organization. And also, what are you missing? What are the things that your team needs or wants from the business there, whether or not that data’s being captured, are there things that you would like to have or that you need to have, whether or not you know that they’re there and you don’t have access to them? Or, they’re just simply not there, that would make your life better. And these are the kinds of things that can actually make a difference.

Again, the data ability [JD2] is key to this, if you tie it back to specific people that are really less likely to respond but if you allow them to respond anonymously, that’s something that they will absolutely give you information that can help you make a more effective decision on “Do I have the data that I need, is it just a matter of visualizing it, or do I not have the data that I need and I need to be going out and capturing that.” And so to that end, what Meaghan and I want to talk about today are the four steps that we feel, not Meaghan and I, but Domo as a whole, make an effective dashboard. And so to this end, we’re talking about things around data integrity, only looking at the things that are important to you, getting the information that you need when you need it as opposed to having to look back a week or a day or an hour later and say “Yeah I’ve made the right decision,” and then also sharing that information out with other people who may not be in your department, people that may be in other parts of your organization, whether it’s finance or HR or just the whole C suite in general, so that everybody’s on the same page about what you’re trying to do and the goals that you’re trying to accomplish and why, whoever it was, the board, or the CEO gave you the money that you asked for to accomplish the goals that you’re trying to accomplish. Meaghan before we jump in, anything you want to say?

MEAGHAN: No I’m just excited to start talking to these in more detail.

CHRIS: Exactly, so let’s dive in. So coming back to the poll that Domo conducted, we asked about data integrity and we asked folks “What is it that you feel that you need to get a job done?” And one of the questions was, does the existing reporting solution, whether that’s Excel, whether that’s micro strategy, whether that’s flick or tablo or spotfire, whatever, does that solution adequately address their needs? And less than 20% said that it actually addresses their needs. And, if you look at that, when you talk about data integrity, you really have to break it down because it comes down to multiple things. The first one is inaccurate data. So, basically what we mean by this is, yeah I’m getting information but we haven’t sat down and agreed on what it is, or I’m not really sure where it’s coming from, or I’m not really sure if anyone’s tweaked it before it’s been brought into the system. So, it could be multiple systems coming from things like SalesForce or InsideSales or spreadsheets or Marketo or Eloqua or whatever the case is, but then also, yeah we’ve got the data but then somebody spit it out and tweaked the numbers before they brought it back into the system. And then of course whether or not somebody intended to make some kind of change or twist to the data, somebody might have just fact figured the numbers, what we call human error. That’s inaccurate data.

The second thing is incomplete data. So this is, I’m thinking that I’m getting the numbers that I need but it turns out that I’m only getting part of this picture, I’m not getting the entire answer when I ask for the data to come back. And then of course the third is what we see most often, and at least I do, Meaghan feel free to jump in here. But it’s outdated data, it’s not that it’s inaccurate, it’s not that it’s incomplete but I’m getting it a day or an hour or a week after I expected to see it, so what I’m doing is looking back and saying, yes I made the right decision or no I didn’t, as opposed to being able to say, hey I made this decision an hour ago and now I realize this isn’t the right decision so I should make a change or a course direction.

MEAGHAN: Right and I say, and I’m laughing to myself because I’ve worked with a customer that has experienced all three of these things but experienced them in adjusting each one individually. So for example the incomplete data, looking at data in siloes, a retailer was looking at their marketing campaign results and trying to figure out why they were seeing a lower ROI on some of their marketing spend. And then started reaching out to merchandising to see what their inventory levels looked like, and realized that they were sending traffic to product pages that were out of stock. So not a great use of marketing spend. But in doing that what they were doing was they needed to take their marketing data and then, they were combing that with merged data in a spreadsheet which was effective, but there was an issue with the formula so they initially had some inaccurate data that way. And then after they had that inaccurate data they spent even more time just setting that spreadsheet to make sure that the formula was all correct, which then took it longer, made it take a lot longer to produce. So that then they were looking at data that was stale by the time that they were actually going through and looking at it. So all of these are very, very common and it’s just interesting to see people experience all of them.

CHRIS: Exactly, and do you know what? It’s one of those things that I’m guessing there are a bunch of people in the audience who are nodding their heads and Meaghan I mean obviously this has been true of our own organization right, it’s not just people that we help, it’s our own organization internally. They don’t want to see something that’s inaccurate, don’t want to see something that’s incomplete, don’t want to see something that’s outdated but until somebody steps up and say alright, well if we don’t get the accurate complete timely data it’s one of those things that “well this is what I got, so I’m just going to deal with it.” And that’s the kind of thing that’s exactly what our founder Josh Jammer said that it’s ridiculous, we shouldn’t have to deal with this, we should never be talking about inaccurate or incomplete or outdated data, the data’s there, why can’t we just go get it?

So to that end, the second step of the four in putting together an effective retail dashboard is looking at the essentials. So based on the survey that we conducted on the app Domo over two-thirds, over 66% of respondents said they regularly have difficulty in making sense of the data. Basically what this is saying is “I’m getting information but I’m not exactly sure what it means.” This to me is astounding. This is not the thing we just talked about which is “I’m only getting part of the data” or “I’m getting data that I know is inaccurate” or “I’m getting data a day or a week after I need it.” These are people that are saying, “Somebody’s feeding me information but I have no idea what to do with it” or “I’m going to go ahead and either make business decisions on this data that I don’t understand.” And so what are the things that we’ve found, and this was something that I’ve, if we, there’s a bit of a paradox with Domo, it’s very difficult to decide what’s important to me, what should I be looking at versus what can I be looking at. And with Domo, once we connect you into a data source, once we say “Alright here’s the data from Facebook or from Twitter or from Eloqua or from Sales Force. Here are 50 or 60 or a 100 reports that you could actually build.” It doesn’t mean that you should be looking at all of those, this is very much a situation where you don’t want to be distracted by so many things, you need eliminate the data noise and separate out the things that relate to the flow of the [inaudible 00.22.31] [JD3] whether that’s increasing revenue, whether that’s decreasing costs, whatever the case might be, from just saying “Oh well this might be interesting to look at.” And this is something that quite frankly I didn’t talk about on a regular basis but Meaghan and the rest of the team, these are the people that actually have to make it work. Meaghan anything you want to say to that?

MEAGHAN: No definitely, it’s almost like the Goldilocks and the Three Bears scenario where you, some people don’t have enough data, other people have too much, but we just want just the right amount. And so figuring out that just because you can look at everything doesn’t mean that you should. That’s part of what we do when we work with customers is focus on what’s going to be most aligned with the organization’s goal and then identify what those outcome metrics are so that we can pull in the data that ties to those results rather than just pulling in everything. Because I actually, I come across it a lot where people will say “Well I didn’t want it all because I don’t know what I want to look at” and that sounds great in theory, having that accessibility that all your data, but really you end up being less effective when you take that approach. So really focusing what you’re trying to achieve and figuring out what data makes sense to measure those results and focus your efforts there rather just doing everything. And we talk about that, that’s trying to bite off more than you can chew scenario.

CHRIS: That’s right, exactly, taking down the elephant in one bite. I mean everybody talks about it and everybody nods their head when you, you know when you say it but it really is true, just because you can see the metrics doesn’t mean that that’s a metric that you should care about. And again this is an extreme example of what we’re looking at here, I mean, obviously there are probably very few people in this webinar that have spreadsheets that are quite this complicated, but at the end of the day whether it’s you know, retail or manufacturing or supply chain or financial or health care, there are people in the organization that are looking at charts that maybe overly complex or a bunch of detailed numbers. Do you really need to be looking at something that looks like this? Or should you be looking at something that looks like this, where we’ve all sat down, whether it’s the executive team or all the members of a particular department like marketing or sales or finance and say, “You know what, these are the things that matter, these are the orders that I’m getting from our pipeline, these are the opportunities that I’m seeing by country, these are the deals that I’ve lost by value.” Once everybody agrees on what the things are that are important to business, it’s important to be able to visualize those things and everybody be able to consume them in a way that makes sense. And, quite frankly, the hardest part of a deployment that I’ve seen in my 25 years in business intelligence is not “Hey can you connect to this system” or “Hey you support this version of the browser?” It’s getting everybody in the room who’s going to consume the information to agree on what a customer is or what an order is or what back order means or what a supplier is. Once that takes place, then you get to the finer metrics and from there you can view the essentials that actually make sense for your business and can actually drive and change revenue or cost or customer sentiment or whatever the case may be. Meaghan am I off on that?

MEAGHAN: Yeah that, no that’s totally, that’s a great point. I think the thing that resonates the most with me is that having a group of people and they’re spending their time arguing about, or debating the definition of what a customer is instead of having a conversation about having everybody on the same page about what the definition is and then using the time to talk about strategy of how they’re going to increase their customer base, or how are they going to best communicate and the brand to their target customers. So, having conversations that are going to help drive the business forward rather than just trying to get consensus is a much better use of people’s time.

CHRIS: Yeah, totally agree, totally agree. And again it’s one of those things that to me and to you and sort of I’m assuming at least some of the people that are listening right now, it’s common sense, but it’s all about doing as opposed to just talking about it. So before we jump into this next slide I’m not exactly sure if this is the time for the next poll but I would again try the next poll if that’s okay, Susan would you mind turning that up.

SUSAN: Okay I’m going to get that poster and it should be out there now. So we can start to watch the survey results come in.

CHRIS: Which is basically, do you have timely access to the data that you need? And we put a hint in here which I kind of wish we didn’t, but it really is true, if you’re waiting a week to get the results that you need to be able to make the next business decision that’s going to drive revenue or decrease costs, you’re probably waiting too long. Meaghan I don’t know if you’re looking at the results as they’re coming in but any surprises here?

MEAGHAN: No, you know it looks like it’s pretty in line with what I’m used to seeing. What about you?

CHRIS: No this is exactly what I expected to see. Honestly I really thought that the 34.8 would be higher than what it is. But basically what we’re looking at, and we’ll push these results out soon, is that a lot of you basically are still struggling with the data that you need to get access to but more importantly, you’re getting access to information, some of it that you need but not all of it, which our CEO again Josh would say “This is crazy, this is ridiculous, we’re capturing this information, why don’t we have the ability to drive it whenever we want to?” So why don’t we go ahead and send the results out and then Meaghan let’s press on with the rest of the presentation.

Now, ironically, based on what we saw here in the survey, Domo, the survey that we conducted was actually in my opinion more horrific. Only 4% of the respondents strongly agreed that they had timely access to the information and if you look at the chart on the screen, even if you factor the agrees, we’re still talking less than a third. Over two-thirds of the people are saying “Yeah I’m getting access to information that I need but I’m not getting it in the time that I need it.” And to us, that’s insane because it’s not just about what you’re looking at, it’s about when you view it. So going back to the points that Meaghan and I talked about before, obviously inaccurate data regardless of when it comes in, is useless, if you’re getting the information that’s not complete or if you’re getting information that’s been tweaked and somebody has made it in effect wrong, well obviously that’s not a good thing. But at the same time if nobody’s tweaked the data, if the data that’s coming into you is absolutely 100% accurate but it’s coming in after the point of time that you need it, in our opinion that’s just as bad. Meaghan anything you want to throw in there?

MEAGHAN: I’m kind of amazed by the survey result, it’s nice to see that people are having better access to data, it makes me feel like that there’s reasons to be optimistic about what we’re doing.

CHRIS: No it’s good to have hope, is that what you were saying?

MEAGHAN: Yeah exactly.

CHRIS: Well and to that end, you know it’s kind of a thing, if we’re looking at something like sales, you know, forecasting can be considered a map, but what you really need is more than a map, you need a compass. And the data coming in and the time that you need it and real time, quite frankly, guys this is something that I’m not sure whether I agree with it sort of because real time to one customer might need every day or every week, because prior to having access to a system like Domo, they might have been getting it once a month, whereas somebody else might say “I have to wait five minutes to get my data, that’s not real time.” So real time to me is very subjective. But regardless, having the data at the time that you need it and being able to help you make incremental adjustments, in other words “Yeah I don’t know if this is the right approach that we made this social or I’m not sure this is the right ad campaign that we should have put on LinkedIn based on the results we’re seeing over the last hour or six hours or twelve hours, we’re going to go ahead and tweak this or we’re going to go ahead and pull back some money and put it somewhere else.” That’s really where the timely access to data comes into play. Meaghan, what do you think?

MEAGHAN: Yeah and that’s the great point about real time data, I think it’s such a common phrase that we hear nowadays that people need to have real time and you know that can be very expensive and take a lot of resources to have that availability and it might not even be necessary for the decision that you’re trying to make. Of course, with social and you know some of the campaigns that you’re working on, real time is going to be important, but for other things it’s not necessarily worth putting that investment in. So being smart about what data you really need to see in real time and what data you just need to have access to when you’re making a decision is a good way to approach that real time question.

CHRIS: Yeah, totally agreed. And to our end, let’s talk about the last part which is making it visible and Meaghan you and I just talked about this yesterday and so but if you look at the results of the survey, oh I’m going to go back one more time, oh there we go. I’m viewing 1 in 20 respondents, 1 in 20 respondents strongly agreed that they have a comprehensive view of the business and by this basically what we’re asking is, “Okay if I’m in marketing I’ve got access to my marketing data but do I also have access to HR and finance and sales and supply chains and operations?” Whether or not the rest of that data applies to me on a minute by minute or hour by hour basis, overall it really matters to me whether or not I’m making a decision that could possibly impact one of those other departments, or multiples of those area departments. And again if you look at the chart on the screen 1 in 20 said that they strongly agreed, but even if you we’re still popping less than a third. And this is a huge part of what we feel at Domo is this core to the ability to run the business effectively which is, I’m not just looking at my corner of the store, I’m looking at all corners of the store and I have the ability to collaborate and communicate with those other folks, so that if I’m making a decision that may only, in my opinion, affect marketing, but at the end of the day it affects supply chains and operations and the warehouse and the network guys and sales, that’s something that we all need to take a good account so that we’re all running the business most effectively. Meaghan, did I get that right?

MEAGHAN: You did, and actually a lot of times when we’re talking about making it visible we do tend to focus on sort of those departments that are located in headquarters so the operation side or the marketing efforts, but where we’ve really seen people take advantage of making it visible is when you’re looking at retail store locations, so having the ability to be able to share the results that you’re seeing in a store in California with a store in Nevada, seeing what’s working and sharing that result in a more real time rather than having to wait for like a monthly regional meeting and say you know “Hey we saw a really good result with upselling by putting this product up by the counter, you should try that” instead of having to, you know wait to have that conversation, having it when it’s really going to be relevant. So taking advantage of being able to make decisions right now instead of having to wait when it’s not going to be relevant anymore.

CHRIS: Yeah absolutely agreed. So Meaghan, what do you think, should we put the last poll up there?

MEAGHAN: Yes let’s do it. I’m curious now that this is [inaudible 00.35.10] [JD4] have been a little bit different from what we usually see so I’m certainly intrigued.

CHRIS: So Susan, do you mind to put that last poll off there?

SUSAN: It’s up there now so our folks can see it, it’s been sent.

CHRIS: Oh thank you. So Meaghan what do you think, what do you think we’re going to see, I’m pretty confident that I know what everyone’s going to see but what do you think?

MEAGHAN: I think well, I think it’s going to be a little bit different from what we normally see, I think there’s still going to be people struggling with it but this group seems to have a better grasp of being able to access their data, but I still think that there’s always going to be room for improvement.

CHRIS: This is true, and actually I don’t know if it’s my internet connection but I don’t get to see the results in this one like I did the other one, so Meaghan are you seeing it?

MEAGHAN: I am, yeah do you think, if you want to give them a little bit more time?

CHRIS: Wait one or two seconds but what do you think so far?

MEAGHAN: So it’s looking like, it’s a little bit more like what we’re used to seeing, so 52% are saying that their data is stuck in siloes, so that is pretty in line and then 28% say no and oops it disappeared on me but, the remainder, it looks like 17% are not sure, so maybe we could throw that into, if you’re not sure it’s potentially the case.

CHRIS: Exactly no that’s exactly what we expected to see and from that visibility standpoint you know, this slide’s kind of cheesy this is one that Meaghan and I had talked about before, I personally wished we had pulled it out, but I get it and the analogy of that which is you know your data’s like an iceberg, you can see a little bit of it, but that’s not the part that’s going to screw you up, it’s the part that you can’t see, it’s being able not just to share the information out with the people that matter, right, hey this is why I’m justifying in particular investments that we made in social or hey this is why I asked you for additional money that we could put into webinars or onsite events, but not having access to all the information that you need is going to make you think that you know what you’re doing and make you think that you’re answering the questions effectively, when in reality, the answer to those questions is, is it really accurate because you’re not looking at everything that you need. So, you know, to put this in a different perspective there’s some managers and executives don’t have an access to everything that they need to be able to do their job effectively, they’re in effect operating on instinct, to I’m going to trust my gut and you know the graphic may be a little bit cheesy here, but it basically is putting a blindfold on people and saying “Alright, we’re going to tell you, you need but the other nine things that you need to do your job”, yeah we’re just going to make you guess and then hopefully you can figure out what those numbers should be based on your gut, based on your experience, based on your history, based on, you know, your time in the industry. And so what’s important here from a visible standpoint, are really two separate things. One is do I have access to all the information I need, the various data points that all will lead together? Then also, can I share those out with other people within the organization? Just because all the folks in marketing can see all the numbers that matter, if operations and supply chains, if sales and HR, don’t understand or can’t see the numbers according to their specific goals within the business or don’t understand how those specific things that are happening in marketing will link to what HR and operations and supply chain and sales are supposed to be doing, then you’re not being able to make effective decisions because you’re not looking at a complete picture, you are in fact looking at just the tip of the iceberg. Meaghan, what do you think?

MEAGHAN: Yeah I think, this has been really interesting to see the results, it sounds like people have access to data more than they used to, but that it’s in the silent view and that there’s going to be a lot of opportunity if people start sharing the data across departments or across functionality and can, when you start having that visibility, it helps you connect the dots and start to see things that you weren’t even aware of before that impacted your role. So, for example, one of the retailers I’m working with right now had them looking kind of at all the standard metrics, like how are their stores performing versus goal, how are inventory levels, how are their marketing costs looking. But then they added in there HR and scheduling data and brought that in with their sales data and started scheduling based on which sales reps were actually performing at the best level, which, you know they were trying to optimize the scheduling beforehand but now they were actually comparing it with the sales results and able to, when they needed to cut hours, cut the hours of the less effective sales people and bump up the hours of the people who were really helping drive the store towards success. So interesting that people are you know having the ability to make decisions using data, but kind of excited that there’s so much opportunity to start looking at other ways to collaborate with other, either departments or data sources.

CHRIS: Yeah that’s a great point. So why don’t we take a quick recap in case anybody stepped away from the computer. Everyone just now joining us so they can get credit for watching the slide show. Let’s talk about those four steps again and I’m going to run through them at a very high level and then Meaghan feel free to jump in as soon as I cover all four. The first is data integrity. We need to make sure that if you’re not getting the accurate data that you need, well it doesn’t really matter, I mean if you’re looking at information that’s wrong, then you shouldn’t be looking at that information, quite frankly you’re better off with gut instinct in my opinion after 25 years of doing this. The second is, just because you can connect to your data source doesn’t mean you should be measuring every single thing, you should measure the things that matter as they relate to the goals of the business. Again whether that’s increasing revenue, increasing costs, improving customer sentiment, reducing customer response time as far as help desk is concerned, whatever the case is, those are the things that actually matter. If you’re looking at 50 metrics you might be okay but if you’re looking at a 100 or 150 metrics as they relate to a specific part of the business, yeah you’re definitely looking at too many things. The third is, “Am I getting the information when I need it?” Real time may not mean every five seconds, real time could very much mean every hour or every day or, quite frankly, in some cases every week, but am I getting the information in a time that makes sense to be able to look proactively as opposed to reactively? And the last thing is, is it visible, am I able to share the information with other people and other parts of the business so that I can justify my existence, so I can say “This is why I’m doing what I’m doing and oh by the way, hey this one particular store, as Meaghan said, is doing something different from the rest of them, it’s making a positive impact on sales or revenue or a positive impact on reducing costs, hey let’s share that out with the rest of the organization.” That visibility is important and if we’re not doing any or all of these things then yeah we probably need to re-evaluate whether or not we’ve got the right solution for looking at the information of our business. Meaghan.

MEAGHAN:      Yeah and I think all four of these points are just so important. You wonder if sometimes it can feel overwhelming like “Oh my gosh is my data correct, am I looking at the right things, am I looking at too much, am I not looking at enough, is it coming at the right time and how am I going to start collaborating with all these different groups?” And I think the thing that, to really focus on is to not try to do it all at once, kind of pick your battles and figure out what’s going to be most important to your organizational goals and focus your efforts on building out some dashboards that are going to tell you how you’re performing in those areas of your business and then grow from there, you know, don’t, just don’t try to have you know an entire organizational dashboard all at once because it can be a little bit overwhelming and that’s when you start to bring in all your data because you don’t know what you’re really going to need and it’s almost that security blanket of, well if I have the data then I’ll be able to be successful. So certainly start small and it’s almost like anything, it takes a little bit of practice but it’s certainly a doable task to start creating these dashboards that are going to help your organization perform, and even, in many cases start exceeding your goals.

CHRIS: So Meaghan not to put you in the spot, but what do you think, is it based on project, is it based on a particular department like what’s the best way in your opinion for somebody to get started? Like you said without you know trying to borrow the ocean or take down the elephant in a single bite, how do you go about starting down this path of you know getting the right data and getting it at the right time and making it visible to other people?

MEAGHAN: I mean there’s two different approaches. One is that you really focus again on what the organization’s goals are so, if it’s to increase sales by 15% identifying what are the levers for what’s the strategy for how you’re going to do that and then building on a dashboard related to those goals and then the strategy for measuring your approach for achieving those goals. That’s been one way. Organizations have started to approach this question of creating a dashboard and sort of taking control of their data. The other thing that I’ve seen that’s worked well is starting with a department that really struggles to have access to data and I see this a lot with marketing, largely because they have so many different data sources they’re working with. So working with marketing for instance to say, “Okay well what are the most important things that you need to track?” I think certainly like one of the projects that we’ve been working on has been the, showing the ROI and marketing automation program, that’s been a big win for some customers. And focusing your efforts within that and starting to pull one or two data sources out of this huge world of data and build it that way. So aligning with the organization’s goals and then also working with a department that really struggles with data have been sort of the two most common approaches I’ve seen.

CHRIS: That’s, actually that’s an excellent answer and that’s exactly what I would agree with. So again we’re going to take some questions, but in the meantime if you want to know more about what it is that we do or how we do it and more importantly if you want to take a tour of what it is that we can offer and have an in depth discussion about how Domo can affect your own business and possibly impact what it is that you’re doing today, we’d love for you to reach out, whether that’s going to domo.com/retail or if you want to hit up Meaghan and me directly, you can email Meaghan or you can hit me up at about.me/ChrisAtDomo. So with that I felt we’d throw it over to Q&A.

SUSAN: Okay I’ll take it from here, thank you Chris and thank you Meaghan, you’ve both given our attendees really so much to think about today and I’m sure that they do have questions for you. I’m watching the queue fill up. So at this time we’re going to shift gears, we’re going to go to the Q&A and I do want to remind anybody on the phone that this is your chance to interact with those speakers, so if you have a question please type it in now and let’s get started so we can get a couple of questions hammered out. The first question here is, “There are so many data points and KPI’s to track, how do you suggest we start or where do you suggest we start?”

CHRIS: Good question. Meaghan do you want to answer upon that one?

MEAGHAN: Sure, I mean I think we talked to this a little bit in terms of trying not to look at everything and focus on KPI’s that are aligned with your business goals or the organizational top priorities, but I think to add on that is it’s good to have a sort of an outcome metric. So, again, if you’re trying to increase your sales this year you’d want to track how you’re performing versus goals, but then also starting to ask questions of “Well if we miss goal, what are the most common reasons why we would be missing goal, is it because our pipeline isn’t full enough, is it because our operational expenses are higher than expected, are we not able to get all the inventory we need to stock the stores? What is it that would cause us to miss those goals and then build out an outcome KPI but then also have the supporting KPI’s that are going to tell you why you’re seeing that result, so then that way you can actually take an action. So, again, if it’s because your operational expenses are higher than expected well then you can come up with a strategy for either how to reduce that or how you can make changes in other areas of the business to offset that.

CHRIS: So Meaghan and to that end, is it fair to say that you know regardless of the data bases that we have available to us, regardless of the metrics that a business may have defined that they think are important, isn’t it important to take a look at the goals of the business and make sure that the metrics and the things that we’re reporting on align to those goals of the business as opposed to just saying “Hey look, this is something that’s important because, well, we can report on it.”

MEAGHAN: Yeah exactly. I mean I’ve seen this a little bit with web analytics where a department or a person within that ecommerce division will talk to bounce rate being lower and talking about that being a win, but really that could just be because your channel mix has changed and you’re not actually seeing that bounce rate decrease have a positive impact on your sales conversion. So you’re seeing a positive impact in theory on the bounce rate, but it’s not actually tied to your fall of increasing sales so not really that relevant. Good to know maybe, in terms of that person’s role, but not probably the top priority KPI that should be monitored.

CHRIS: Exactly, thank you, that’s exactly what I hoped you would say.

SUSAN: Well let me draw out the next question, so we can get threw a couple here. This is a good one. “How long does it typically take to set up a dashboard like the one you folks are discussing?”

CHRIS: So I’m going to let Meaghan take this one but if I were to answer I would say a day, day and a half, tops. Meaghan, disagree?

MEAGHAN: And I’d say oh you’re absolutely right. No I mean it really varies but again I think this is the kind of project where it pays to put the work in ahead of time, so to have the meetings where you’re figuring out really what’s most important to measure or what are the metrics that are really going to help us understand if we’re achieving the goals that we set out to achieve and then mapping those to your data sources to make sure that you have the data that you need and that you’ve identified how often you need that data to be refreshed. So spending a little bit of time doing that pre-work and then again, well if you sort of create a that can vary a little bit by the tool, but if you’re going to either work with a company like Domo we can help you get that set up and through our tool, you’ll have some help to move it along. I don’t know Chris if you want to add to that.

CHRIS: Well no I was just going to say Meaghan, I mean I was joking earlier, obviously it’s not a day or a day and a half, but what we talked about before, if we don’t have the metrics defined that aligns the goal to the business, it’s not really about the time that it takes to close something on the trees because it’s going to be worthless, it’s not going to be something that’s of value. So the first thing that we have to do is spend some time talking about what is it that we’re trying to achieve in the business, what are the KPI’s, I’m sorry key performance indicators, or metrics or measures, that relate to that and then hey do we have the data to actually support that. So I mean I would think, you know, I mean obviously Meaghan it depends on the complexity and the particular customer that we’re dealing with, but similar between four and 12 weeks we can have something evolving that at least, it may not be the ultimate, these are the metrics we’re going to use to run the business, but at least we can have something that we can talk about and say yes this is good or no this is not good. Is that fair?

MEAGHAN: Yeah that’s completely fair, that’s it, I mean and again working with customers the ones that I found have had you know the quickest time to value have been the ones that have been thoughtful in terms of figuring out what makes sense to measure versus the people who try to bring in everything and just say, “Oh well I’ll just, I’ll know it when I see it.” So it’s really important to align those key performance, indicators to your goals.

CHRIS: Yeah agreed.

SUSAN: Folks do you have, here’s the next question, do you have any clients using the dashboard for brick and mortar as well as online sales?

MEAGHAN: We absolutely do and this is one of the big advantages of working with Domo is that we are able to bring in data from different sources and compile it in one place and that’s something that people struggle with because a lot of times you’re looking at your online sales in one system and then the point of sales data from your retail stores in a totally different system, and it could be really time consuming to bring those two sources together. So that’s absolutely part of the implementations that we do is bring in those data sources together so you get that comprehensive view of how your organization is performing. And then again like part of the make it visible point that we’ve talked to, is by having that data in one place the brick and mortar stores can get a sense of what is selling on the website in a way that they weren’t previously able to do that. Then vice versa, the team managing the web are on line operations can be collaborating with the stores to kind of see what customers are saying in the stores, what, you know what’s selling, what’s really moving, what are the trends. And just have that be more collaborative so it’s a more cohesive experience, which I think is what we hear a lot now with retail is that customers don’t just shop one way, they’re going into the store, they’re looking at their phone and having the ability to be able to see the data from all those different touch points in one place is going to help you have a better understanding of what’s working and what’s not.

SUSAN: Oh I’m sorry, go ahead Chris.

CHRIS: No I was just going to say I totally agree, sorry Susan.

SUSAN: Yeah, well the next question kind of piggy backs on that one and it says, would it be a huge change in culture to share data company wide, and have you seen others kind of struggle with that?

CHRIS: So Meaghan let me take a stab at this and then I’m going to throw it over to you. I’m actually smiling right now. This is definitely something that is an issue, and a big part of what we do at Domo is making sure that we’re leveraging the wisdom of the crowds which means I can see what others are talking about, I can see what other people are viewing, I can see the alerts that my boss has set on a particular metrics. And definitely, without question, I have encountered multiple customers who have said “Yeah can we turn that off because that’s kind of scary, I don’t really want, I don’t want others knowing what I’m doing.” It’s very much about being able to, in our opinion, from a company perspective, being able to share that value, to share that wisdom of “Hey the guys that I’m working with or the people that I collaborate with on a regular basis have these alerts set on their particular metrics” or “My boss is looking at these particular things and if I’m not following the things that she’s following, yeah somebody’s going to know that and eventually it’s going to come back to me.” So, in my opinion, and based on what I’ve seen, there is some very mature organizations that not necessarily embrace that exposure to what everyone’s looking at, but at the end of the day in our opinion, and again by our opinion I mean Domo collectively, this is something that actually helps drive more effective business statistics. Meaghan.

MEAGHAN: Yeah, it is, it can take a culture change and that’s something that I work with customers on is what’s the plan to sort of move to this more open culture if it doesn’t exist. I’ve also had interesting experiences with people moving just to a more visual digestion of data, a lot of people are used to their spreadsheets so also having a plan for changing the culture of how people are consuming data. And I guess this is going back to the original question is, I think just to make sure that it’s not too scary. With the different tools you have the ability to change the permissions of what different levels in the organization are able to see, so for instance if there is certain finance data that you don’t want the entire organization to have access to, there are certainly controls to show that only the CFO is going to be looking at this data. So that it’s not necessarily putting out everything to the entire organization to see, it’s sharing information that’s relevant to the people who need to see it. And when you frame it that way, I think people are more comfortable with it because, and this kind of goes back to what I was talking about earlier is that any time you talk about this approach of like having all the data available or having, doing it all at once, it can just, it can be a harder sell, but when you really focus on a smaller piece of it and explain why you’re doing that, I think it’s easier to get that adoption.

SUSAN: I’m going to cut in here just so that we can get one last question in before we have to close, and I love this question because it’s so unusual. “What is the least used but most important metric for ecommerce and brick and mortar that everyone should be looking at but isn’t?”

CHRIS: That’s a great question. Meaghan I feel dumb, but I’m going to throw this one to you.

MEAGHAN: Yeah that’s a great question. I don’t know that there is one KPI that fits everyone’s needs, it would depend on your organization and  I hate to sound like a broken record but it’s really like, what is it that you’re trying to achieve and then aligning that KPI with those goals. So if your organization is really focused on customer loyalty and increasing the amount of repeat orders per customer, the metric that you’re going to be most interested in and is under-used might be different than a bigger organization that’s expanding their retail operations and growing stores, so it’s hard to have a one size fits all metric, that’s not to say that there aren’t key retail metrics that we should be looking at, but it would vary based on what your priorities are.

SUSAN: And I guess the ultimate answer is call Domo they’ll help you figure one out.

CHRIS: Yes. Susan thank you for reading my mind, exactly.

SUSAN: Alright, well folks,we are out of time so and we promised to stay on schedule, we tipped the scales a little bit, we’re going to wrap up here. So I do want to thank Chris and Meaghan for sharing their insight with us today, Domo for sponsoring our event, and all of the attendees who joined us on this call for your attention and participation. Please remember that the archive of this presentation will be available for viewing for the next 12 months so you can watch it again or refer it to a colleague. If you’d like to download a PDF version of this presentation you can do so by visiting the event resources area in the lower left side of your screen. Domo has also made a few recently published white papers available that you can download there as well, so go check that out. Thank you again for joining us and we wish you all a great day.

CHRIS: Susan thank you.

MEAGHAN:      Yeah thank you this was fun.