Retailer Globe

Directions Magazine had a podcast a couple of weeks ago in which Joe Francica discussed his vision of how a retailer could use Google Maps (or some such web map engine) to organize and display business intelligence. I left a comment, but I'm still thinking about it - as I've been busy designing portals for years.

I've been involved with business intelligence portals for a long time. My first portal was a CD that I made in 1998 when working at First USA. I was working with a major retailer by doing a test by identifying customers who shopped at the retailer (from their credit card purchases), and then sending targeted offers to their customers and those who shopped the competition. This retailer was high maintenance and wanted many details. After the test was complete, I could just hear the phone ringing with various questions. So, I answered them all.

Literally, I came up with every test combination possible and made a web page for it using SAS. I saved the HTML files and built a javascript front end to direct users to files saved on the CD. It was a portable portal - no need to connect to the Internet or worry about security. If you had the disk, you were good to go.

I used this same strategy in 2000 at LifeMinders.com. We were a big permission email company - it seems like a commodity now, but it was in the dot com boom and even the back of my head was on CNBC (We also ran our Super Bowl ad too!). Millions of emails were sent daily and I tracked clicks to set content strategy, bill advertisers, etc. Again, I used SAS to make every bloody report possible - it was quite successful; the reports took 2-3 hours to run, but once available, they were blazing fast for the users.

I started learning how to make a true interactive portal next - designing web pages using ASP and talking to databases. Reports started to slow down a bit, but it scaled much better. My third portal used this approach which tracked direct marketing strategy for millions of mortgage direct mail pieces. Eventually, I started experimenting with mixing operational reporting with profit and ROI metrics.

At this point, I had interviewed with a huge retailer to manage their site location department. The goal was to build a globe portal - very similar to what Joe was talking about in his podcast - in which a deal maker could click on a global location on a map and get an instant 3 year P&L projection to provide an initial read of a potential site. If favorable, additional resources would properly investigate it - with the goal to eliminate wasteful investigations.

This still sticks out to me as the ultimate in spatial analysis - clicking anywhere in the globe and creating the appropriate trade area estimate - then mixing the right amount of culture and demographics (probably using segmentation) to select (or develop on the fly) the right functional form to project revenue and project costs - for 3 years. Wow.

I didn't get the job - which is great since it opened the doors to be here at Coldwater Creek. I've played since 2002 with various portal designs to direct real estate research and I've yet to find the right mix - the biggest challenge is justifying the resources for a small audience. Which makes me wonder about the ultimate challenge. The more I understand about real estate P&L characteristics, the more I appreciate that it is less dependant on geography and more about the deal terms.

Over the years, the portal business has gone big time. Books and consultants galore exist to tell you how to do it. In 2003, I did develop the first operational portal here and its done well over the past 5 years. Today, my peers are improving it utilizing Reporting Services and using Stephen Few's design thoughts - its so full of features, interactivity, and rich with content. My early portals were functional and highly targeted - today's are complex and built with an army. But this is the first part of Joe's portal - rich, operational metrics wrapped in a well designed system.

The second part - real estate strategy - is what I have struggled with - Blockbuster appears to have been successful - they won a MapInfo Meridian award for it. I would love to see this in action and better understand who the users are and what questions is it successfully answering.

The final part is linking the first two - which will be the toughest. After someone has clicked on the globe, how do you direct them to operational metrics, HR listings, and how this retail location is meeting their goals? And once in these details, how do you back out to understand how this store operates in the grand scheme of things? And how is the company doing overall? And vise versa?

Tough questions - especially since most users are interested not in the physical geography, but in the corporate geography - what operational zone, region, or district is the store in? Or, most importantly, what GL code? Which is one of the larger challenges for Joe's globe - getting the operational and physical geographies in sync for a highly functional portal.

See, I told you I've been thinking about it for a long time!