Retailers aren’t short on data. They’re short on time, attention, and engaged store teams, the real engines of productivity. Paul Boyle CEO of Retail Insight talks about how they can move from data overload to precision, empowering teams to act quickly and efficiently, ultimately boosting profitability and operational efficiency.
Stores teams are swimming in reports that refresh faster than teams can act. The result is cognitive overload and operational drag, at precisely the moment when labour shortages, inflation and supply chain fluctuations are squeezing margins. A typical grocer carries 30–150k SKUs, measured through hundreds of KPIs. Expecting managers to mine insights manually is a losing game, especially with store teams constantly affected by churn. And with wide variation in experience, training, and language across stores, insights must be simple, teachable, and designed to build engagement, not anxiety Dashboards tell you what happened, but stores need the ‘what’s the next best action?, clearly articulated, timed based on impact and tied to measurable outcomes. When insights are truly actionable, front-line associates stop hunting for meaning and start fixing problems. That shift alone unlocks hours every week for higher-value work – better service, better selling, better availability. The goal isn’t squeezing more out of stretched teams; it’s helping them do more with what they already have.
The mindset chane is simple but profound; data must serve the store, not swamp it. The goal is fewer charts, fewger emails, more targeted nudges that are confident enough to be prescriptive and context-specific enough to be trusted.
The place to start is solving margin leaks in execution. The classic example is phantom inventory, records that say stock exists when it doesn’t (or vice versa). It manifests as walkouts, overstocks and shrink, and it corrodes trust. The fix is not simply doing a massive stock take, but building a system that continuously detects patterns of error and either auto-corrects upstream or routes a pinpointed task to the shop floor. And for district and regional managers, who often spend hours on the road juggling performance reviews, compliance checks, and coaching, precision fixes reduce the noise they need to triage and create space for real leadership.
Correcting what can be corrected should be done automatically. If that is not possible, send the store associate to the exact shelf and product with a simple, focused instruction. This precision should replace needle in a haystack searches, manual calculations, or counting the whole aisle just to be on the safe side. Not only is the volume of alerts reduced but they are presented in order of execution.
However, many so-called simple fixes fail because they are viewed through a single departmental lens. Merchandise worries about markdown side effects; ops worry about labour minutes; and finance worries about shrink. Regional leaders also carry the burden of translating HQ KPIs into something their store teams can actually act on, and that translation often breaks down. The connective tissue is the data and the way the outcome is framed. Better to define a North Star metric that multiple teams can believe in, for instance on-shelf availability or fresh waste reduction, then show how actions raise that metric without simply pushing the pain elsewhere.
Practical habits
Execution improves fastest when store teams feel supported, not managed, and when regional leaders get back the time they need to coach and develop people instead of chasing reports.
- Lead with a change agent, someone senior enough to clear roadblocks and champion wins and who can protect store and regional teams from unnecessary noise so they stay focused on what truly moves the needle.
- Design for more than one user, the same signal should help stores act and help central teams improve upstream processes.
- Start small to prove value quickly, by choosing a staple category (bread, milk) or a frequent pain point. Make results visible within weeks.
- Codify and reward by formalising the metric and celebrating stores that move it. Momentum is a powerful implementation tool.
Constant tasking can lead to fatigue whereas intelligent tasking flips the script by enabling analysis of what truly changes outcomes by the hour, store and category. The goal is to separate signal from noise by ranking actions by value per minute of labour. When stores see the sales lift, waste reduction or NPS improvement that follows, you create a virtuous circle where they ask for more insights.
Intelligent tasking is an engine that is constantly reprioritising based on real conditions such as delivery delays, sell-through, weather, promotions and learning from outcomes. It should also be inclusive in how it communicates, based on clear language, simple visuals and handheld prompts that can rise above language differences. Clear language and intuitive prompts also strengthen engagement, something the best-performing stores consistently share
Evolution beats disruption
Big platform overhauls can be necessary, but they are slow, risky and distracting. In a tight margin environment, evolution beats disruption, which means, use the data you already have, the devices associates already carry and the processes stores already know. Most retailers don’t need more systems; they need a way to make existing tools, teams, and processes work smarter together. Layer smarter analytics and precise tasking on top. That path shortens time to value and avoids the chaos (and cost) of rip and replace.
Productivity is all about people, products and places
Productivity gains typically come from one of three initiatives – stop doing something, improve the process or add enabling tech. But technology alone doesn’t lift productivity. Store success is overwhelmingly driven by engaged colleagues and strong regional leadership, patterns retailers see consistently when comparing high- and low-performing stores. The smart solution is to do all three. They remove low value counting and searching, redesign the task to be point and go and add automation where the machine is better than the human. This lifts People productivity and leaves them free to serve; Products move quicker, shelves are fresher and better assorted, while Places is about higher store performance. And for area managers. who often work between stores, reviewing performance from a car park, these systems surface where coaching or cross-training is needed, without drowning them in analysis.
Getting started
- Pick one leak initially ideally the biggest and most easy to fix – phantom inventory, expiring stock or promo execution
- Commit to a 6-12 week pilot – this is broad enough to be representative but narrow enough to move at pace
- Measure what matters – define the North Star plus a handful of leading indicators and then share the wins weekly
- Operationalise the feedback loop – automate what you can, task based on exception and learn and retune.
- Share the success – celebrate store teams publicly when the numbers move.
Celebrating people and teams is as critical as the analytics – engaged stores deliver better results, and visibility builds that engagement.
Grocery doesn’t need an axe for data overload, it needs a scalpel – precise, prescriptive and placed exactly where it counts to build a simpler, faster, more human-centred operation that puts margin back into the business.