Supply Chain Analytics in Retail World

How Supply Chain Analytics is improving the efficiency in Retail World

Retail Supply Chain is one of the most critical one. There has always been continuous improvement in Supply Chain efficiency by the retailers using various tools

Supply chain analytics helps the retailer understand and predict it much before

Ticketing Supply Lead Time - Urban Outfitters

US-based fashion and lifestyle retailer, Urban Outfitters, has been named as an early adopter of a new web-based analytics product designed to provide detailed visibility into variable ticketing supply lead times.

FastTrak Analytics is an internet-based software package for order processing, tracking and management of the ticketing function developed by +Fineline Technologies

The new analytical reporting tool will provide Urban Outfitters and FineLine’s base of 200 brand name retail customers with three core reports:

order turnaround time, which calculates the average time between receipt of an order by FineLine and shipment of tickets;
order received time, as the average time between receipt of an order by FineLine and delivery of tickets to vendors;
orders shipped to country, as the average time between receipt of an order by FineLine and delivery of tickets to vendors in a specific country.

Next Best Action and A/B Testing

How to use A/B Testing for Customer Analytics

Next Best Action is a learning based on the response of the previous action. Every action/offer is an test offer.

A/B split testing

A/B Tests work like this. Say Two different email messages (Message A / Message B) are sent to customer segments and the responses are measured by the following factors

Mail Open
Clicks on Links
Conversion (Purchase etc)

If say the more number of Message As are clicked than Message B, then A is said to be more effective.

Email Response analysis

The responses are then analysed - responders / non-responders are segmented and analysed. The model is then refreshed.

Once the model is refreshed the customers can be retargeted / left alone

Retargeting Customers

Retargeting is to try out the offer / promotion / message another time. They can send the same message / a different customized message


A/B Testing in Web Page Design / Website Traffic

A/B testing in websites use different web page content on version A and version B of a page. The pages are loaded randomly to the user. The responses / conversions are analyzed. Next Best Action is defined for each page and the conversion rate is nothing but the rate of action being taken for the total visits. Some of these might be different design for version A and B or different positioning of elements etc


Case Study - Victoria Secret A/B Testing

Victoria Secret - the leading eCommerce vendor is testing its

Email Subject lines
Offer and Image











using A/B testing (see Site Doublers for the complete case study)