RETAIL

ANALYTICS

KX FOR RETAIL SOLUTIONS

Kx has been the global software leader for

complex analytics on massive-scale

streaming data for over two decades. The

Kx technology is an established and

trusted standard for high frequency

trading, surveillance and research in

financial services.

Kx for Retail brings the power of this

cutting edge technology, combined with

true retail industry and analytical expertise

to help businesses unlock the full value of

their data through innovative but simple

and executable solutions.

ABOUT US

Kx is a division of First Derivatives plc. Listed on the London Stock

Exchange [FDP:LN] First Derivatives is a specialist software and

consulting organization with a uninterrupted track record of customer

success and profitable growth since it was listed in 2002.

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Big Data is a widely used term across many industries, but

we’re only now really seeing the birth of true big data in retail.

As the variety and volume of data inevitably increases at

pace, in what seems like infinite scale, the key to unlocking

the insight trapped inside this data is through advanced

analytics. Basic data analytics have been around forever, but

new techniques in data science and advanced analytics are

becoming much more important in all walks of life. As data

variety and volume grows, it inevitably becomes harder to

untangle. Humans will always be the key component part of

analytics, but advancements in technology means humans,

alongside artificial intelligence, can take analytics in to a new

era of data driven insight.

A NEW DAWN FOR ANALYTICS

ADVANCED ANALYTICS IS

MORE IMPORTANT THAN

EVER IN RETAIL…

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In the new world of big, fast multi-channel data, test and control can no

longer be carried out over days and weeks, it needs to happen instantly.

Retailers need to be able to predict what customers will want and act in a

matter of milliseconds, not hours. To enable this kind of quick and

powerful decision making, all data solutions and decisions must be

carried out in real-time. Machines and algorithms that predict shopper

needs as they happen will be critical, as static models will no longer keep

up with the pace of change. Machine learning can help remove the need

for expensive repetitive manual tasks, and empower business experts to

spend more time on strategic tasks.

For machine learning to succeed, experts need to be engaged to ensure

all current human knowledge is incorporated. Data quality and variety

also remain key. For successful training, models need to then adapt from

human decisions and apply them to the data.

Correctly configured and calibrated models can deliver a step change in

performance, and help business leaders use their time effectively. Kx

deploy a 3 stage process to ensure successful deployment of ML models:

Collate – Key business experts engaged to ensure the correct data and

intelligence is incorporated in to initial models and best replicate existing

processes

Configure – Our ML experts work with your data scientists to code up

“human” activities and insight, and incorporate them with existing

forecasts, algorithms and models.

Calibrate – Our method for training algorithms enables control samples

from existing models, and allows us to adjust and calibrate during the

initial learning phase, ensuring an improvement on existing capability.

THE RISE OF THE

MACHINES…

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Transforming big data in to actionable insight is one

thing, but turning that insight in to a commercially

focussed output is another. We understand completely

how data and analytics should be used in retail to drive

commercial benefits through both cost reduction and

operational efficiency but also through customer

focussed strategies to drive incremental revenue. Our

solutions are built using cutting edge technology and

mathematics but are designed to translate the

complicated to the simple, with simple being clear and

actionable outputs.

Kx ADVANCED ANALYTICAL SOLUTIONS

GIVE COMMERCIAL CLARITY TO YOUR DATA

TRANSFORMING DATA INTO

INSIGHT AND COMMERCIAL

STRATEGY IS KEY

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ASSORTMENT

ANALYTICS

Planning range without using data effectively can cost money through product losses and loss of potential revenue. Our range optimization tools help businesses to use their data to drive more effective assortment planning: // Connecting Data: Our Kx technology allows us to build a connected data platform to fully unlock the potential of your data. Complex basket analytics needs a powerful platform that can scale. Kx is unparalleled when it comes producing insight at lightening speeds from historical and real-time data. // Powerful Analytics: Kx combines extreme data processing with sophisticated modelling to produce powerful basket analytics. Using techniques such as clustering and perceptual mapping, we help business truly understand a customer’s decision making process and operationalize the roll-out of the analytics across entire ranges through easy to use tools. // Commercial Outputs: We deliver commercially focussed outputs through our visualization and dashboards platform, empowering decision makers in your business to make the right decisions to optimize range.

PRICING &

PROMOTION

Price is more often than not the most important driver of customer choice. Getting the pricing and promotional strategy right using a top-down approach is something that can only truly be achieved by unlocking the insight from vast amounts of historical data through analytics. // Strategic Pricing: Using sophisticated techniques such as conjoint or price elasticity modelling, our approach to pricing analytics helps businesses to truly understand the market impact of current and future price strategy from total business through to individual product. // Smart Pricing: We deploy algorithms within your business through connected technology and machine learning to enable you to make scientifically driven pricing decisions as the macro and micro environment changes. The simple tools we develop enable retailers to make smarter, day to day pricing decisions, with true real-time capability. // Promo Analytics: Whether it’s understanding the impact of past promotions, the performance of promotions in real-time, or forecasting the impact of future promotions, our approach to analytics uses your data to help you make the most profitable decisions for your business.

Kx RETAIL ANALYTICS SOLUTIONS

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MARKETING

OPTIMIZATION BUSINESS INTEL

& VISUALIZATION

Kx RETAIL ANALYTICS SOLUTIONS

Brands now need to engage with customers at a 1 on 1 level across multiple channels. With its real-time, streaming and time-series analytics engine alongside machine learning capability, Kx can enable truly optimized marketing campaigns and increased ROI: // Hyper Personalization: Effective marketing strategy revolves around delivering the right message, to the right person, through the right channel at the right time. Broad-brush marketing campaigns no longer cut it for the consumer that wants a personalized customer experience. Kx’s marketing platforms enable real-time, omni-channel, personalized marketing strategies. // Machine Learning: Real-time, personalized marketing needs modelling capable of adapting to changes in environment in real-time to be truly effective. Our machine learning techniques allow retailers to benefit from automation when it matters, saving time and delivering optimized campaigns. // Real-time Performance Media: Kx’s real-time, streaming and time-series analytics engine can enable truly optimized media campaigns, incorporating digital intent data and switching campaign spend where it will deliver the best conversion and ROI.

A hugely important capability for any retailer is being able to review all current and historical performance metrics immediately, and act upon the data. Kx deliver a Business Intelligence platform to enable instant querying and decision-making:

// Kx Real-Time BI hub: Can be deployed on your EPOS or sales platform, providing instant and real-time BI. Kx technology can easily integrate and connect with existing infrastructure to provide an insight portal with extremely fast query speeds and sophisticated analytics capability. // Kx Dashboards: Deliver rich visualizations in HTML 5, and provide the capability to slice and dice your sales data with any variables such as region, store, customer segment, shopper missions and product categories. The in-memory processing delivered by Kx means queries take seconds to run, and unlock the power of your data. // Analytics Engine: Powerful analytics engine for intelligent data-driven recommendations – ability to analyse, develop statistical models and execute machine learning algorithms all in one system.

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SUPPLY CHAIN

OPTIMIZATION CUSTOMER

ANALYTICS

Kx RETAIL ANALYTICS SOLUTIONS

Developments in technology and growth in consumer expectations are driving dramatic changes in supply-chain functions within retailers. Data and analytics is now pivotal to the way supply-chain is managed. Retailers require a platform capable of delivering real-time optimization to drive quick decision making: // Real-time BI & Alerts : Our BI & Dashboard platform connects streaming data and historical data to allow in-moment, self-serve, supply-chain analytics. Real-time alerts allow the end user to be notified of any anomalies across the supply-chain whether it’s a change in projected demand or availability issues. // Dynamic Forecasting: Utilizing machine learning, we apply advanced modelling techniques at item level to allow for continuously re-optimized forecasting. Forecasts will optimize as the data fed in to the models change in real-time allowing the end user to effectively manage supply-chain decisions instantly. // Data Connectivity: Kx technology can be connected to many different data sources or systems and can act as a central intelligence hub driving decision making across stock control, customer experience, logistics and supply management.

The customer journey is now immensely traceable across multiple channels and retailers are capturing huge amounts of varied data at every touch-point in the customer journey. Key to optimizing customer experience is through unlocking valuable insights through data connectivity and advanced analytics: // Customer Behavioural Analysis: Key to developing an effective customer data strategy, is through unlocking the insight within fragmented data sources. Our ‘In One Place’ platform connects data to provide a centralized analytics engine across all your channels, to truly understand customer behaviour. // Customer Segmentation & Personalization: Whether it’s utilizing clustering techniques to build customer segments & missions to help drive marketing strategy, or delivering hyper personalized customer experiences, a powerful analytics engine is needed to process and model the vast amounts of customer data. // Customer Journey Optimization: Through our platform we connect many varied data sources to help drive powerful journey analytics. Understanding customer journey and route to conversion is key to delivering the right communication, to the right person, through the right channel, at the right time.

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At Kx we recognize that the success of any technology

project is dependent on the business problem it solves.

We work with retailers to help them understand where they

are in their Big Data journey, and help deliver solutions that

drive genuine costs savings or sales increases.

Kx provide a clear framework to support understanding of future

and Big Data readiness built around our 3D Big Data principles:

Kx ANALYTICS

CONSULTANCY

Kx for Retail sits perfectly in the middle of software &

solutions, advanced analytics and expert retail strategy. Our

working model can be scaled up from simply providing and

implementing technology solutions, through to fully mobilised

data scientists, dedicated to bringing your data to life.

1. Design Kx carry out a Big Data audit, reviewing retailers against

the market, and a health check on your current and future

data readiness. Outputs demonstrating areas of

opportunities and risks are presented with clear

recommendations.

2. Develop Development of a real-time Big Data platform that gives

instant access to all your data, delivering shopper mission

based insight and BI on key sales drivers

3. Deploy Kx deliver analytical solutions – tactical and strategic.

We have vast experience delivering marketing, customer,

product, price, range and supply chain analytics solutions.

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As retailers continue to collect more information, the technologies to support Big Data evolve. Born from capital markets where Big Data has been the norm for some time now, Kx is a data management and analytics platform for the modern era. Key to leveraging Big Data in retail to lower costs or drive sales, is the ability to collect, store and integrate data with end user systems such as EPOS, mobile devices, or existing business systems. Kx technology lends itself to this perfectly, as it is able to take data feeds from multiple sources and formats and perform high speed analytics all in one stack. It also integrates seamlessly with applications allowing businesses to make real-time decisions and execute them on their website, a mobile device and on tills in stores. Performing analytics on real-time and historical data, processing queries, delivering results and feeding downstream applications requires an immediacy and agility that is often difficult to achieve. Kx is agnostic and can easily integrate with existing systems, whether that be supply chain management, EPOS, or digital data. Kx enables retailers to process their customer data in real time, and as a result, use that information to drive better decision making and better, more optimized retail decisions. Retailers able to leverage more of their data, faster than their competitors, are the ones that will step ahead.

WHY Kx?

saves you time, money and drives improved ROI

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Kx TECHNOLOGY

ENABLES ADVANCED

ANALYTICS Scalable to tens of

terabytes of data with

no degradation in

query response times

Kx has a native 64-bit architecture that is

essential for real-time execution of customer

facing solutions using the massive amounts

of data created from retail data sources.

The basis for Kx Technology is a uniquely

integrated platform which includes a high-

performance historical time-series columnar

database called kdb+, an in-memory

compute engine, and a real-time streaming

processor, all unified with an expressive

query and programming language called q.

Designed from the start for extreme scale,

the kdb+ database has been proven

to solve complex problems faster

than any of its competitors.

Open architecture

simplifies integration

to new and varied

data sources, ideal for

retail

Supports multi-threaded time-series

analytics and aggregation queries

across many billions of rows of data

Historical databases allow users to

access terabytes of records in

seconds and is limited only by RAM

& disk capacity

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

Head Office 3 Canal Quay, Newry, BT35 6BP N. Ireland +44 (0)283 025 2242

London Cannon Green Building, 1 Suffolk Lane, EC4R 0AY, UK +44 (0)207 337 1210

New York 45 Broadway, NY 10006 USA +1 (212) 447-6700

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Sydney 22 Pitt Street, NSW 2000 Australia +61 (02) 9236 5700

Toronto 1599 Hurontario Street, Mississauga, On, L5G 4S1, Canada +1-289-329-0636

www.kx.com/retail

Leeds Round Foundry MC, Foundry Street, Leeds LS11 5QP, UK +44 (0)113 394 4671

Email us: retail@kx.com