Amazon Is Taking Your Lunch – Data Driven Strategies
What Sets Amazon Apart From Other Companies?
Amazon is one of the few companies that really understand how to be data driven. If you have ever interviewed with them, you know what we mean.
After the programming or analytical questions come the data driven questions.
Data Driven Strategy Questions:
- “Oh you built a reporting site?”
- “How many hours did it save?”
- “How did you prove that your idea was correct?”
- “What data did you use?”
- “How did you reduce the amount of help desk calls, by how many, how long did that take?”
And so forth. Everything you do, has to be backed by data.
When a company like that enters into fields like groceries, you know they are going for blood.
Safeway, Kroger and PCC better prepare themselves, because they won’t be able to just stay status quo.
They can’t sit on their current business foundation and hope their business models will continue to work and make them a profit.
“Hope is not a strategy!
What is Amazon Strategy?
Amazon is the king of saving their customer money and providing an amazing customer experience.
They know how to listen to their customers needs and they use data to be well attuned with what to offer their customers.
Instead of resting on their laurels and letting their old business model become stale.
They use a combination of compassion and empathy for a customer and data driven decisions to….well…win.
The thing about Amazon is that data is in their culture.
This is the difference between companies that are just entangling themselves in the world of data science and those that have made a home data focused strategies.
Data driven cultures are difficult to create, but you have to start.
How Do You Create A Data Driven Culture?
Amazon has the ability because of their prestige to hire for people who will fit this culture.
It is in their leadership principles. Three of which are that data driven, customer centric, and new value stream generating pillars
- Customer Obsession. Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. … .
- Are Right, A Lot(because of data!)
- Learn and Be Curious (like a data scientist or analyst should be!)
They are customer obsessed, e.g. compassion and empathetic to their customers.
They are right because they constantly have the data to back themselves up, and that in turn pushes them to be curious about new possible markets, and value streams. This is why they continue to grow at such an amazing rate.
Other companies might have to actually build a data driven culture. However, most companies are too impatient to actually develop the culture to support being data driven.
Instead, they jump to purchasing $10 million pieces of technology that no one in their company is prepared to use.
This is a mistake. Data driven cultures don’t just happen when a company is 10-100 thousand people large. It requires time, training, and leadership to motivate their teams.
It is a one day at a time processes.
Yet we know that there are companies trying to turn ships that would
require a year to change course in weeks.
That is not how change happens. It is better to change your company slowly and look back in a year then try to move it quickly and fail and be in the exact same spot or worse the next year.
That is why we believe in data science and strategy working together. Otherwise, there will be cultural dissonance and everything will fall apart.
Side note: We are going to put out quick free blog workshop to help challenge your team, and yourself towards being data driven. It requires practice and action! Not just talking!
It needs to start from the top down.
Leaders need to first challenge themselves and then their teams to start using data…and Kroger and Safeway better start soon!
Now, Amazon is looking to have brick and mortar grocery stores.
If they transfer their knowledge of making data driven decisions and customer obsession. It isn’t a question, they will succeed. They will produce a better product and service.
Why?
Because business models haven’t changed for years for grocery stores and there are always little things in businesses that can be improved, but because no other grocery improved them, all the grocery stores kept status quo.
Some still don’t have automatic check outs!
Data Driven Strategies Let’s Your Company Keep Ahead of The Curve!
That is just it, being data driven and customer obsessed, is about breaking status quo!
It is about always being better in the right direction!
Customer obsession pushes you to be better, and data pushes you in the right direction.
You can’t just be one!
If you just use data, you come off as robotic, dry and uncaring.
If you are just customer focused, you will listen to the wrong problems as sometimes customers are fickle and say one thing, but mean another!
So you can’t just pick to be one and go with it.
Companies need to start doing both. The other principles are also important, but your company has to find their own way, their own unique data driven customer obsessed culture
Amazon is a data driven culture, as it continues its hiring frenzy, you can see its strategy for domination across multiple verticals play out.
You better believe that their strategy, and decisions are all data driven!
To Read More About Data Driven Teams and Strategy Check Out The Articles Below
How To Ensure Data Science Team Success
analytics Big Data Customer Experience Data driven Data Science Data Strategy