Woolworths expects data-driven decisions will "completely change" retail

Woolworths and its analytics joint venture wiq are backing data-driven decision-making to “completely change” and reimagine retail for both operators and customers.

Speaking at the GroceryShop conference in Las Vegas, Woolworths Group's chief analytics officer and managing director for wiq Amitabh Mall said the grocery giant had embarked on “a strategic shift in [its] business” a few years ago when it took a minority stake in Quantium before taking a 75 percent share, leading to the creation of wiq.

wiq has so far developed advanced analytics capabilities to support merchandising and buyer relationships.

A 'Next Gen Promotions' solution can automate shopping promotion planning and effectiveness and was touted on a recent Woolworths results call.

Woolworths runs 4000 "yellow ticket" promotions each week, which benefit from the use of “very sophisticated” tools, but which also retain humans in the loop for decision-making purposes.

Operational growth trajectory

Mall said that while it's "still early days" for wiq, its operations have grown substantially.

“I now have a team of 800 or so data scientists, engineers, product managers, who are only focused on one goal - to unlock the power of data to reimagine retail," he said.

Mall said wiq spent its first year "trying to establish ourselves and prove that what we did added value" to the Woolworths business.

When the team first started, it put together a road map of ambition with over a hundred use cases where automation could be applied to add value to the Woolworths business.

Mall said the business is one of the largest users of Google Cloud for the region with “everything hosted on the cloud", including its core data model.

In year two, Mall said, there’s “there far too much need for what we do than the capacity that we have” to deliver it.

Mall saw wiq as well-positioned to lead "the next big change the world of retail will see."

“Every 10 [or] 15 years we see a big change; this is the next big one where data-driven decisions will completely change and reimagine retail for us.”

While mistakes may be made "along the way", Mall said the focus would remain on the 'North Star' of using data to reimagine retail.

“We are looking forward to the next few years," he said.

Kate Weber travelled to the United States as a guest of Oracle and Salesforce.