Welcome


This blog is dedicated to the topics of Course materials, Innovation, and Technology in Education. it is intended as an information source for the college store industry, or anyone interested in how course materials are changing. Suggestions for discussion topics or news stories are welcome.

The site uses Google's cookies to provide services and analyze traffic. Your IP address and user agent are shared with Google, along with performance and security statistics to ensure service quality, generate usage statistics, detect abuse and take action.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Free e-book on analytics in retail

IBM has made available a free e-book version of the limited edition book Business Analytics in Retail for Dummies.

The use of analytics in retail is not new, but it is a fairly new practice for many in the campus retail environment. Various POS providers are adding analytics modules, and other industry suppliers, such as Verba, also provide some analytics capability. Improved data-driven decision making is critical for retail businesses today (large or small), and will be even more so in the future.

As with many books in the "Dummies" series, this book provides a good introduction and some practical action items for individuals or businesses that lack experience with business analytics. From its description:


Business analytics isn't a new concept, but new technologies are emerging that make it possible for average business users to analyze and understand the data. This book offers principles and tools you can use to discover how your customers behave – and how to put that knowledge into action to drive more sales. In this book, you'll learn how to: Understand the basic concepts of business analytics; Dispel business intelligence myths; Set up scorecards and dashboards; and, Measure consumer sentiment through social media.
Industry icon Rich McDaniel might refer to the concepts here as "measuring what matters." The book is a good one to help retailers start thinking more about how they use data in decision making. Some of the chapters include topics like: using analytics to meet the demands of smarter consumers, measuring the impact of decisions, and ten ways to improve shopping experiences. If you are looking for some summer reading and have yet to start using analytics, this might be the [digital] book for you!