Integrating strategy into your analytics is one of the main areas most struggle with when doing their analytics — knowing what's relevant and what's not, what's a true insight and what's not. But if you know the secret sauce to bringing strategy into your analytics you’ll be able to turn your data and analysis into effective action to grow your business. And so I want to talk about pizza. Yes, you read that right — pizza.

Last week I ran a webinar for our students on "Changing Shopper Behavior in a Pandemic." We vetted over 250 whitepapers, webpages and resources to identify some of the key things you need to consider about the changing shopper including:

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Category Management Association’s annual conference in Las Vegas, where category management and shopper insights professionals gathered to learn, share and network. It was particularly exciting for us at CMKG, because the CMA announced our new partnership at the conference. This venture will allow us to get our training into even more brilliant minds around the world. I facilitated 9 live training sessions over the course of the 3-day conference, spanning topics like: Identifying Growth Opportunities in Your Business, Fact-Based Presentations and Storyboarding, Shopper Insights (co-developed and facilitated with Leslie Warsaw from SIMA), Category Management in On-Premise (2-part session), and many more!

As we kick off this new year, there may be obstacles in your category plans that can unknowingly limit your category results. These obstacles exist for many retailers because their category analytics and plan development haven’t kept pace with some of the biggest disruptors in the industry – including data, the changing shopper and the changing marketplace. If you don't change your strategies, processes and thinking to consider these changes, and don’t open up to new perspectives and ideas, your biggest growth opportunities can be completely overlooked. Below I’ve captured some examples of potential barriers that may be limiting your growth:

Working with many manufacturers and retailers is a great privilege for me, and one that gives me the unique perspective to help identify broader issues and opportunities for our industry. A recent opportunity that was identified by Tom McDonald (Category Management Association) and I was to improve the connection of what we do in category management to the Shopper. How do we better connect with Shoppers? It starts by focusing on the big picture - including defining your department's purpose, and identifying your expected outputs AND inputs. By delving deeper into your inputs - including data, tools, strategy, processes and people (based on where your biggest gaps are) - you can uncover ways to improve your overall approach. These improved inputs can change your game! Are you ready? Although it may be difficult to get out of your comfort zone and start to think about ways to make changes to improve the future for your department, there are three steps that can get you started.