Decision-making enablement with simplicity and timeliness

Client:

Based in Montreal, our partner is a leading Canadian e-Commerce company specialising in a wide range of products, with a primary focus on entertainment items. They offer an extensive online catalogue, catering to diverse customer needs in the entertainment sector. They operate in a sector undergoing significant change, thus speed and accuracy of their insights is of critical importance. 

The Problem:

We were engaged by the CEO of an eCommerce company based in Canada, to assist them in solving a forecasting challenge. They had a wealth of data, established marketing segments, but they wanted to make smarter commercial and marketing decisions leveraging sales projections. Put simply, our partner had limited knowledge around best use of data for driving better decisions. The objective was to enable the CEO to have confidence in baseline sales projections without delivering a technologically cumbersome and costly solution.

The Solution:

The solution was a forecasting tool delivered with a two-stage approach. The first component was to ensure engagement through a series of demonstrations and visualisation sessions that minimised complexity and highlighted key insights. The second stage was the development of a high-level dashboard telling the story of 5 key metrics, split by segment-defined dimensions, updated weekly.

The Outcome:

Confidence was garnered in the forecasts and the "expected run-rate" for the coming 4 weeks was generated for the 5 metrics, enabling broader commercial discussions about major variances. As confidence grew in the baseline forecasts, the company was able to identify valuable trends in their segments, but that wasn't all. Attitudes of key decision makers started to change as they began to think about performance through a data lens, a vital step towards instilling a data-driven culture.

Next Steps:

This led to further interrogation of their sales data. Leveraging their existing sales funnel, the company discovered that repeat-purchase customers are more than 12x more likely to make a 3rd purchase than what single-purchase customers are to make a second purchase. This informed their offer strategy, and they shifted budget towards single-purchase customers, and saw a 4x increase in repeat purchases YoY.