Marketing analytics brings ₹ 536 cr of incremental revenue for Titan in FY 18-19

The analytics program at the Titan Company began five years ago. Analytics experts and service providers were invited to take evangelisation sessions and training programmes for employees from across functions at the Titan Company. Professors from global institutes were invited. They gave a worldview of how analytics is playing a role in the digital transformation in companies globally. “We also invited experts from TCS to talk to the employees. This is an ongoing exercise conducted every year for junior, middle and senior managers in the company,” says Yashwanth Kumar, Head of Analytics and Insights, Titan Company.

To deep dive further, the company conducted focused sessions on HR, marketing, etc, on how analytics can have an impact on these functions. These sessions were conducted by experts who also worked for the company for some time. The target audience was middle and senior level managers. Experts from marketing, ecommerce spoke about campaign analysis, modelling and website analytics respectively followed by sessions on product and pricing analytics.

There are day-long sessions only on marketing; broken into three tracks: Product and brand analytics, application of analytics in media spends and ecommerce analytics. There are about 13-15 such topics.

Analytics across functions

Human resources: HR departments have been measuring the efficacy of their program using analytics. The other areas include attrition management, career planning, attracting and retaining talent. The necessary models are built for program implementation. Marketing: For FY 2018-19, in the area of marketing, the analytics function brought ₹536 crore of incremental revenue. This figure has been audited using the test and control methodology for ascertaining the incremental revenue came because of using marketing analytics. “We validate the incremental customers and revenue earned because of analytics,” informs Kumar. This was done through the loyalty program by sending personalised targeted communication. The techniques used include propensity mechanisms, next best actions, recommendation actions, etc.

In the last FY, a few hundred crores were saved by running close to 800 projects to drive analytics in the organisation. “The business has given the credit of this saving, because of the hours saved on manpower,” says Kumar.

Geospatial analytics for better store locations

Across the brands, Tanishque, Fastrack, World of Titan, Titan iPlus, the company has about 1600+ stores. Every year, close to hundred stores are opened. The implication of a wrong store-location selection is very high from a financial perspective. The land lease for the store is signed for a period ranging from 5-15 years. Thus, the cost economics is huge. The retail team has to be empowered with the right analytics for selecting the store location.

The first level of analytics about the hotspots on customer locations with respect to a particular brand in a particular locality is shared with the retail operations team. In case if the number of customers is too large, then a second store in the same locality is a probability. This is also matched with the presence of a retail hotspot like a high street location or a mall, where the store can be opened. This also helps in predicting the likely turnover for the store.

Accordingly, the amount of square feet of the store and the number of people manning the store is also shared with the team. “This model built for store-location and associated analytics has given us an accuracy percentage in the upwards of 85 percentage,” says Kumar. The data points not used in the tool has also been used recently. This tool has been productised and converted into a self-service mode. The retail managers have started using the tool based on various parameters like the catchment areas, similar stores in the same area, potential store-sites, etc.

The target set by the analytics team is to have an incremental revenue of over 1000 crores, which can be attributed to analytics.

The budget is funded depending upon the kind of application and risk associated. The budgets for risk taking, experimental and explore kind of analytics initiatives are funded at the group level, while the operational and routine, exploit initiatives are funded inhouse. These initiatives seek immediate business results. For example, the budget for marketing campaigns gets subsumed from the marketing budget itself.

Analytics in other functions

Merchandising: Building customer insights to build the right product suites and store wise allocation Supply chain and inventory management: A forecasting model has been successful in predicting with over 95 percent accuracy on the revenue from a particular retail channel. Retail operations team: Apart from geospatial analytics, insights on why certain stores are selling more and why certain stores are not Product marketing: Models are built on pricing, product mix for stores, etc.