Wal-Mart Knows the Data Rich Compeditor has the Advantage: Just-in-time Delivery becomes Predictive Planning Tool

Here is a great article about another one of the ways Wal-Mart exploits customer data. It is a classic case of the eventual power that smart supply chain management and just in time delivery becomes a powerful tool for short term planning.

HURRICANE FRANCES was on its way, barreling across the Caribbean, threatening a direct hit on Florida's Atlantic coast. Residents made for higher ground, but far away, in Bentonville, Ark., executives at Wal-Mart Stores decided that the situation offered a great opportunity for one of their newest data-driven weapons, something that the company calls predictive technology.

A week ahead of the storm's landfall, Linda M. Dillman, Wal-Mart's chief information officer, pressed her staff to come up with forecasts based on what had happened when Hurricane Charley struck several weeks earlier. Backed by the trillions of bytes' worth of shopper history that is stored in Wal-Mart's computer network, she felt that the company could "start predicting what's going to happen, instead of waiting for it to happen," as she put it.

The experts mined the data and found that the stores would indeed need certain products - and not just the usual flashlights. "We didn't know in the past that strawberry Pop-Tarts increase in sales, like seven times their normal sales rate, ahead of a hurricane," Ms. Dillman said in a recent interview. "And the pre-hurricane top-selling item was beer."

Pop-Tarts and Beer! That is a storm survival kit if I ever heard of one. Is it different from NorthEast blizzards?

The point is not the pop-tart (which are just wonderful ) the point is how the entire supply chain that can swing new products into place based on a "push" strategy with a very short delivery path can also shift into a supply chain "pulling" the resources it sees it needs and having the data to back it up.

Why does this matter to advocacy groups? We never share data. We need to look at the raw response that works when media cyclones hit. What is successful in building loyalty to causes in the wake of a flood? When do groups need field organizers? When do the communications staff provide the most value? What is the critical window to get policy and political expertise plugged into a hot campaign? What is the right tempo of email to members and supporters when a group is operating int he middle of a major breaking news cycle? Is it OK to ask members to opt-in to a short term event news feed of email? When will the movement share enough data that our suppliers (donors and foundations) will have the confidence to believe they need to move their pop-tarts into our hurricanes?