"It was 2008, and the thought of operational disconnects, revenue loss, data paralysis, and team inaction was bothering a group of retail executives and big data experts. As the group sat down to brainstorm and figure out a way to connect all the data they were drowning in, the illustration of a possible solution started to take shape on the whiteboard. A system was sketched in this room that could provide a single source of truth, consolidating the incoming retail data from every part of the organization— igniting the spark of DynamicAction.
Today, under the leadership of John Squire, DynamicAction provides a solution specifically built for retail teams that connects data from merchandising, marketing, operations, customers, returns, and finance. Thousands of proprietary retail algorithms are then applied to determine the reasons impacting merchandising KPIs and drive the actions to be taken for improvement. “DynamicAction ensures optimization of strategies, targets, tactics, and results, while also allowing merchandising teams to retain the financial impact projections of each potential action at their fingertips,” mentions Squire, CEO, DynamicAction. By creating a scientific data-spanning environment for its clients, the Redwood City, CA-based company delivers a convenient and connected platform to foster faster, more profitable decisions, much to the delight of DynamicAction’s clients, which include Neiman Marcus, Brooks Brothers, Sur La Table, and Nine West.
"DynamicAction ensures optimization of strategies, targets, tactics, and results, while also allowing merchandising teams to retain the financial impact projections of each potential action at their fingertips"
DynamicAction utilizes more than 600 proprietary algorithms that encapsulate hundreds of collective years of knowledge to pinpoint margin-eating disconnects in the business, recommends specific actions to rectify those disconnects, and prioritizes them by the organization’s financial impact.
The Immediate Impact
Designed as a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution, DynamicAction is purpose-built to offer retailers out-of-the-box metrics and data connections across their enterprise. Retailers are not only furnished insights on their connected data, but the actions needed are also delivered. The actions are then ranked by value to the business, and DynamicAction even manages the workflow of actions. It starts with an action backwards approach to ensure the right data is collected and the right questions are asked to produce tangible actions. As Ken Seiff, former EVP omnichannel at Brooks Brothers, recalls, “The speed at which we deployed DynamicAction and the immediate impact of the product was astonishing, as we did not have to set anything up. Not only was the adoption, but the implementation and action were also fundamentally easier.”
By combining business intelligence, big data analytics, web analytics, and prescriptive analytics, DynamicAction’s platform empowers the merchandising team with data-driven answers to review and monitor inventory levels, conversion, profitability, ratings, time on site, fragmentation, and competition.
The alliance partnership with Accenture will allow DynamicAction to help the world’s largest retailers to navigate the troubled waters of modern day retail in the future
The DynamicAction platform allows business executives to gain a holistic view of their retail organizations and gives merchants the operational intelligence they need to make swifter and more profitable decisions. Instead of reacting to the outcome of retail operations, the firm places decision-makers in merchandising and the executive suite at a competitive advantage, by delivering factual and actionable solutions to business problems with their DynamicAction Week approach.
The Approach
Rather than collecting information and trying to understand what happened last week, DynamicAction’s Week approach offers an immediate and comprehensive merchandise record summary, which enables an organization’s merchandising team to materially impact the business by taking confident, connected actions faster; like in the case of Nine West. The inundation of data and the speed of their business were making it challenging for Nine West to make connected decisions across merchandising, marketing, operations, and finance. Through deploying the weekly engagement—DynamicAction Week Approach—with DynamicAction’s Customer Success Manager, Nine West was not only able to more effectively identify and capitalize on the site observations, but also garner larger profit opportunities to drive growth. The DynamicAction solution uncovered that 12 percent of the inventory value, roughly $756,000 in potential profit, was overstocked with products with few views and recommended Nine West to assess the quality of the thumbnail product imagery, ensure correct product categorization, and fine-tune the filter attributes. Additionally, DynamicAction recommended the Nine West team to work with marketing teams to increase the external exposure of the inventory. The result: Nine West incurred an amount of $5.7 million in potential profit within the first four months.
Additionally, by leveraging its partner network, DynamicAction offers pre-built and custom programmatic connections to accelerate an organization’s implementation strategies. This enables decision makers and business users to easily connect to their most relevant data, collaborate around that data in one intuitive platform, and make faster, better-informed decisions. Further, DynamicAction’s Partner Network is an ecosystem of trusted partners such as PowerReviews, Informatica, and Feefo that share the vision of accelerating growth through the delivery of innovative omnichannel experiences and solutions. By delivering integrated technology solutions, comprehensive services, and deep industry expertise, the firm’s Partner Network aids organizations in accelerating time-to-market, improving ROI, and leveraging investments core to their business.
DynamicAction further extended its network recently by striking an alliance with Accenture. Through this partnership, Accenture became a reseller and service provider for DynamicAction’s solutions. “At the heart of Accenture’s strategy is the drive to continue to help clients be more agile in this competitive environment,” says Jill Standish, Global Managing director of Retail, Accenture. “Our alliance with DynamicAction is unique, as it brings together Accenture’s deep retail delivery capabilities with a cloud-based analytics firm that is solely based on profit optimization. DynamicAction’s solution focuses on the retailer’s most pressing needs, which are to increase full-price sales, improve margins, curb the discounting addiction, and capitalize on demand.” According to Squire, this investment and alliance partnership with Accenture will allow DynamicAction to help the world’s largest retailers navigate the troubled waters of modern day retail in the future.
The Journey Ahead
DynamicAction has come a long way in its journey to become a market leader in the area of big data analytics for retailers. From a concept to ignite and turn disparate data sources into prescribed actions across the organization to a retail analytics behemoth, the firm has revolutionized retail. DynamicAction has also acquired technology leaders from a range of retail verticals—those that desire to achieve the same level of digital transformation.
Through new customer acquisitions, DynamicAction has doubled its operating revenue each year since 2013 as the total revenue that it manages for customers, increased by more than 250 percent annually. “There’s a new way to run retail organizations—with a clear understanding of data and immediate actions to improve performance. DynamicAction is not only a powerful tool for retailers in its ability to provide a holistic view of business operations, but an essential instrument for digital transformation in an age of retail and technology disruptions,” concludes Squire.
