12 August, 2020
In the conditions of reduced demand, restrictions, and declining profits, the most important tool is the management of business optimization, in order to cut off excess and increase the efficiency of the main thing.
Among the costs that can be avoided: administrative, transportation costs, the cost of routine tasks that can be automated, as well as the cost of "error" or approximate calculations. The last point means that in crises, the price of each miscalculation is very high. If you open a retail outlet in a crisis, the calculation of the effectiveness of the choice of locations, assortment, potential customer traffic, advertising costs should be extremely accurate.
Closing a point in a crisis, if the company has several of them, is practically the work of a minesweeper: it is necessary to accurately calculate not only the current, but also the potential efficiency of the entire network and each point. It is important not to lose customers and take into account the growing load on the remaining points.
Marketing Logic's clients are mostly large companies that remain stable in almost any crisis. Our products help them maintain their leadership and move forward at a time when many people are "sliding" back. But now we would like to offer medium-sized businesses opportunities that can help them survive the crisis, save on costs and increase profits. The developed and tested tools allow us to provide ready-made or "package" solutions that are more affordable for businesses from a financial point of view than creating a complex architecture in individual projects in large corporations.
Below, we have described as briefly as possible the capabilities of ready-made and working tools based on neural networks, machine learning, and analytical modules, which together are usually called "artificial intelligence". These are not abstract developments, but real tools for medium and large companies and, possibly, for certain types of small businesses. We have divided them into target areas.
Sales departments:
The comprehensive MLead product helps to increase the efficiency of the sales department by 20% -40% by freeing up employees' working time.
The solution consists of 5 blocks: database, mobile application, reporting, optimization module and geo-platform. Each of the modules is responsible for improving the efficiency of processes and increasing the final conversion of contacts at the conclusion of the contract. Due to the big data associated with the contact database and the analytics module, the conversion of contacts to calls is increased. Lead allocation, geo-planning, and the use of a mobile application can reduce the time for scheduling appointments and travel, hold up to 80% more meetings per day and spend less time on reporting.
Automation solutions can save up to 20% of working time by reducing routine tasks, and AI-monitoring of "burnout" and incentive programs increase the overall efficiency of the department by 20-40%.
Atlas geoinformation system helps to calculate the potential efficiency of any retail outlet in Russia based on geoanalysis, which includes information on traffic, population composition and welfare, traffic flows, infrastructure, environment and competitive environment. The calculation is clarified by the big data of the Marketing Logic company and the accumulated statistics of the client company. This effective tool allows you to select the most suitable location in advance and with high accuracy for maximum payback and profit growth. Numerous cases of our company and the market as a whole confirm the high efficiency of this approach.
In a crisis, it is also important to competently close outlets, which, with their operating costs and low profit indicators, drag the entire business down. With the help of GIS Atlas, analytics and expert assessment modules, it is possible to calculate the potential of all network points as accurately as possible and make a decision to close the least profitable ones, not only at the moment, but also taking into account their potential efficiency.
Assortment management:
Assortment policy is something that companies pay attention to at any stage of their development, but in times of crisis, this policy should be even more sensitive and take into account even more factors, this is an objective reality. Analytical tools, including video analytics and computer vision, can help here too. Customer behavior, their changing income, preferences, the degree of confidence and uncertainty when buying, as well as analysis of prices and popularity of SKUs, sales times, conditions, up to the weather, are all factors that influence the approach to assortment management. Competent and accurate use of modern technological tools is a minimum of a few, and a maximum of dozens of profit percentages won from the crisis.
Marketing Optimization:
In most companies, marketing and PR budgets are the first items to be cut during a crisis. This makes sense when it comes to the survival of the company, but there are tools to help reduce these costs without giving up the results. In one of our most illustrative cases, a large Russian bank, where the annual marketing budget was more than 1 billion rubles, the introduced AI technologies helped to save more than 300 million. This is almost 30% of the total budget with incomparably lower costs for the implementation and training of neural network systems that analyzed the purchase of advertising, its placement, compared with the efficiency and dynamics of sales in offices throughout the country. The computer allows you to identify patterns and factors affecting the result better than professional expert opinion (but with its help), which practically excludes "accidental" placements and promotion costs, which means that it leaves only costs that will pay off.
Managing employees:
A number of Marketing Logic tools can significantly improve the efficiency of employees ' work. We have described the results of MLead for managing field sales staff above. In addition to this tool, analytical modules that evaluate the results and pace of work can be used for such purposes. Data analysis allows you to identify "burnout" at an early stage, imperceptibly decreasing efficiency, irrational use of working time, and other signs.
If we are talking about evaluating the quality of consultants ' work in retail outlets, then its assessment is qualitatively enhanced by If we are talking about evaluating the quality of consultants ' work in retail outlets, then its assessment is qualitatively enhanced by , , which tracks the time and format of employee communication with customers in relation to the final result. The analytical block ranks indicators, allowing you to use the experience of more effective employees to train others or to make other management decisions.
A similar algorithm of actions allows you to evaluate phone conversations and consultations with minimal participation of supervisors or group leaders.
Automation of routine processes:
In the economy mode, which triggers every crisis or unstable economic situation, the most" offensive " expenses are the costs of organizing routine processes, without which the company cannot exist. It can be about filling out documents by clients, scanning passports and applications, sending scans, forming declarations, invoices, invoices and other accounting documents, searching and sorting various papers. Each employee or department doing this kind of work is potentially a more efficient allocation of this time. If you add to this the cost of the payroll, control, management, and associated administrative costs, the costs (and potential savings) will be even higher. Automation of routine and simple processes from the point of view of human labor allows you to reduce these costs and focus them on more priority activities for sales growth.
For example, the Action.Docs program saves up to 80% of manual labor when searching for the necessary information in documents, and its automated document processing reduces time costs by more than 300%. High accuracy of recognition of all types of printed text documents, handwritten texts, QR and BAR codes can significantly reduce the cost of monitoring these processes.
The crisis always forces one to look at new opportunities, because the familiar environment allows, sometimes for a long time, to do without innovations, new technologies and approaches to business. In a time of constraints and instability, not only the strongest, who have powerful reserves and an airbag, survive, but also the most innovative ones. This does not always apply directly to technologies - sometimes a different view of business processes is already innovation and a new incentive for development in difficult conditions. But if you are ready to go further, to get out of the crisis in leadership positions, not to lose them, to keep the level of income or increase it, we are ready to offer you the full potential of our developments, products and our expertise to make these goals a reality.