Over the past two years we’ve seen a disconcerting trend in our Retailer Benchmarks. It seems as though the mid-market retailer selling General Merchandise and Apparel has gotten left out in the technology cold. We’re talking about retailers with annual revenue under $250 million USD. We know there are tech vendors targeting these retailers, but somehow the message isn’t getting through.

Let’s take a look at data from our most recent benchmark – Advanced Analytics in Retail. In this survey, retailers in that revenue bracket report the three most important uses of the data they collect are to uncover trends impacting future objectives, to help optimize operations, and to help them manage their relationships with consumers. These are some lofty expectations.

Even more surprising, of all the retailers surveyed, these retailers are most excited about using advanced analytics to help them react to sudden shifts in demand. Sixty-two percent cited this as a top-three opportunity for them to improve their business vs. only 36% of the largest retailers (those with more than $5 billion in annual revenue).

These same retailers are most willing to embrace new Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and scorecards delivered by advanced analytics to improve their business operations. They also recognize that not delivering analytics to front-line managers is a problem for them. None of our survey respondents in this category provide any analytical support for store managers, but 62% recognize those same store managers really do need more access.

They also seem to have money to spend. Forty-five percent report budgets for data visualization projects and 30% have budgeted for analytics. Another 36% report budgets for analytics provided as a web service.

This is just data from one of the many benchmark studies we ran last year. We saw similar trends in other studies.

So what I’ll be looking for at NRF is loud and powerful messages for those retailers. Why? It’s a large market, and these retailers are also the “babies ” that will become the next retail powerhouses. I worked at many of them when I was still a practitioner, so they hold a special place in my retailing heart. They are always willing to take surveys are avid readers of our research, and seem genuinely eager to improve. Let’s help them move beyond “sweat equity ” and get smarter.