In the world of retail, effective knowledge management is critical to establishing your competitive edge. Retail enterprises with agile knowledge management and insights engagement processes are better positioned to generate quick, quality consumer insights—a surefire way to meet and exceed customers’ expectations and make winning competitive decisions at the speed of retail.

5 Knowledge management challenges (and solutions) in retail

1. Transforming knowledge into strategic customer insights

Retail moves fast, and so does its data. Friction-free convenience, click and collect, social commerce, global supply chain issues, AR shopping experiences, changing browsing behavior—it’s hard to keep up with rapidly changing retail industry realities. But making sense of the data in a way your business can leverage? Even more difficult. Overwhelmed insights and analytics teams can’t effectively support your business. Likewise, businesspeople who cherry pick data may make uninformed, costly decisions.

Incorporate insights engagement into your knowledge management processes.

Insights engagement is what knowledge management is missing in retail enterprises. Effective knowledge management in retail isn’t only about bringing all your information together in one place. It’s about having insights engagement seamlessly integrated into your knowledge repository. Your insights function should be empowered to bring the voice of the customer to your business teams, so they can make decisions that optimize the customer experience at the speed of the market.

2. Insights professionals are stuck in a librarian role

When it comes to knowledge management in the retail industry, insights, and analytics professionals are plagued by too much information, too many stakeholders to serve, and too little time. Insights pros often become gatekeepers, fielding long queues of information requests that leave little time for quality synthesis and insights-driven recommendations across the organization. When insights pros’ reach is limited, so is stakeholders’ ability to make informed decisions quickly.

Democratize knowledge and insights with self-service tools for stakeholders.

The antidote to playing the tedious insights-gatekeeper role is democratizing insights across your organization. Knowledge democratization is about putting insights at stakeholders’ fingertips, so they can quickly find baseline knowledge when they need it without stalling your insights teams’ progress on higher priorities (but with standard processes to ask more questions if needed).

3. Too many places to search for retail insights

The rapidly changing retail landscape brings with it a tsunami of data your insights and analytics teams must collect and transform into something understandable and useable for the business. But with so much information available and so many departments with differing priorities, retail organizations can become gripped by information silos. Market knowledge ends up spread across separate systems with no way to connect the dots.

Leverage technology that brings all your sources together in one place.

Technology that brings all your internal sources, syndicated sources, newsfeeds, brand trackers, primary and secondary reports, etc., in one place will transform the way your insights teams work and how your business teams make decisions. With a one-stop-shop for knowledge and insights, business and insights teams work more efficiently and collaboratively driving innovative and competitive solutions.

4. Duplicated research and scattered research processes

Research management is akin to knowledge management, and when the two fall out of sync, your retail organization ends up duplicating research efforts and wasting time and money on retail market research you already own. What’s more, if research best practices, concept definitions, research workflows, and approval procedures, aren’t consistent across the organization, it’s more difficult to connect the dots between research results and gain a better return on your research investment.

Integrate lean research processes into your insights management system.

Effective knowledge management in retail includes developing standardized, lean research processes, so expensive market research continues to add value to your decision-making process. For example, before someone commissions new research, do they have a quick way of checking your retail organization’s entire knowledge asset for related research? Further, after research is commissioned, does your enterprise have an automated, user-friendly way to ensure your vendors upload all data and results to your system so it doesn’t get lost on someone’s desktop?

5. Getting employees to use insights management software

Most knowledge management systems are a chore for your employees to use. Unfortunately, an unfriendly user experience will tank your stakeholder buy-in and make it more difficult for you to implement successful change management when you introduce new knowledge management practices.

Prioritize and personalize your stakeholder experience.

When it comes to insights and knowledge management software, choose technology that allows you to personalize the stakeholder experience across roles, categories, and business lines, so your stakeholders are always getting information that’s valuable and relevant to them. It should be a breeze for your stakeholders to ask a question (natural language processing is a must). The system should go the extra mile with AI-assisted summaries and highlights. It should be easy for your insights team to bring together contextualized and curated expert knowledge and connect it with stakeholders who need it, when they need it.

An all-in-one insights management software for the retail industry

Brings all your research and data into one place with AI that understands your retail business and connects the dots across all your shopper and market data. A Market Logic technology empowers your insights and analytics teams to promote strategic retail knowledge across your business, so you can run an insights-driven business. Want to see Market Logic’s insights management solution work? Schedule a demo today.