Large Data in small industry

By Andy Raynor - New Hampshire: Consider niche markets, while on the surface they may not generate much consumer data, however interesting trends emerge when small businesses actually look at their data. Businesses, both large and small generate thousands to tens of thousands of data packets each day. These packets may seem inconsequential to the business owner, but when given context - they become much more important.

Large businesses continue to leverage big data and you should too. Take a local florist shop that reached out to me recently. They operate a smaller florist shop in New Hampshire, they have a CRM system that they use to track orders, but the gold mine they had collected (unbeknownst to them) was locational trend purchasing.

What I mean by locational trend purchasing is that after aggregating their data - I was able to locate "hot spots" within the cities and towns they serviced along with peak days. You might assume that the busy days were the holidays and you are correct. The holidays accounted for 50% of their revenue, but looking deeper at the numbers suggested an uptick around local events and weather patterns within sections of the towns they service.

The owner had a concern that she purchased too much inventory one day and too little the next and because flowers and chocolates are perishable, she could not keep much on hand. These locational events happened predictably each year over a three year trend line and accounted for 30% of the companies revenue.

In 2016 we identified the key events about 15 days out of the year that without context, seemed to be busy for no reason but in reality - there were local events and weather patterns that contributed to an uptick in sales and a strain on inventory.

By building inventory around these hot spots, the florist was able to increase sales on these days by 25% accounting for a 10% increase in gross sales annually - just for 15-25 days of the year.