Athina Douzina, Author at CACI

What can the water sector learn from other sectors to improve customer experience?

Posted on: 5 May 2021

Identity Resolution, customer segmentation, and real-time multi-channel communication tools have the ability to surprise and delight water customers in the UK. What can be learnt from the success of other sectors?

The dreaded “Beast from the East” of February and March 2018 left over 200,000 consumers in England and Wales with little or no water and resulted in OFWAT releasing their “Out in the Cold” report – measures and requirements to prevent something like this from ever happening again.

Then, Covid hit. When whispers of a distant virus first circulated in the UK, I don’t think anyone truly anticipated just how serious it would be. Over a year into it, everyone is still trying to make sense of the changing consumer habits and how household and non-household consumption will change moving forward. Regardless of anyone’s opinions on how the future might look, one thing is clear – demand is high.

If you’re not familiar with the nuances of demand forecasting or operations for the water sector, you may be thinking “well of course demand is high, everyone is at home”. However, the consequences of this are much more far reaching – from consumers completely changing peak usage as a result of later waking times due to mass non-commuting, to children not being at school during an unseasonably hot Spring in 2020, causing paddling pools to be filled across the nation. This caused a big headache for many departments within the water sector – such as diverting water supplies to meet demand for those at the extremes of reservoir distance, adjusting pressure times for household consumption, and massive concerns about the size of pipes being too small to deliver the demand of water at peak times.

One thing was clear, water companies needed to ask consumers to consider how much water they were using. Nothing as extreme as a hose pipe ban was required (yet)…but considering not filling up your paddling pool every day, not having a bath every evening because you’re in lockdown or reconsidering whether the car needs to be washed every. single. day.

CACI is in the fortuitous position where we work across multiple sectors with the sole focus of enabling organisations to “do amazing things with data”. So, what can the water sector learn from other sectors to enhance their communication with their own customers – not only improving engagement, but ensuring consumers are contacted in channels that appeal to them.

If I was the Director of Customer Engagement at a water company, what would I do?

By following the four below points you’ll be enabling your organisation to trust that you’re speaking to the right customer, with messages that resonate with them, via the right channel.

MAKE SURE MY CUSTOMER DATA IS IN ORDER

If I look at myself, I have multiple email addresses, my surname is frequently misspelt (thanks Rob Brydon), I have two mobile phones with different numbers, even my postal address frequently appears incorrect on certain address look-up providers, which means I’m sometimes on edge as to which of the three incorrect addresses my parcel will be sent to (thank god I live in a little village with a local postie)! Data can get messy. With customer data stored in disparate databases, customer engagement/customer services are often the teams that get the brunt of customer frustration.

Typically, you’ll find a customer who’s disgruntled needing to phone a call centre to complain, to then be asked for their non-sensical account number (which often needs to be found on a letter or via an online account – a whole other kettle of fish trying to log in there), to then be directed to a different team, to then be put on hold. It’s a sure way to reduce C-SAT scores and irritate your customers – probably escalating that complaint and making it harder to resolve.

Now, imagine a world where you can link all customer data and ensure that it’s correct. So, if a customer phones into a call centre with a complaint you’re able to quickly and effectively go to one customer record, with all their contact history. That would improve their experience immediately!

The ability to connect online and offline data in real-time already exists. So, this problem could be a distant memory. Read all about it here.

BE PREPARED IN AN EMERGENCY

If the past has shown anything, having the ability to communicate to customers in real-time across channels is vitally important. The great news? There is already tonnes of technology out there to enable you to do this. Imagine the water supply is being cut off in an area due to a burst main. Well how about if you could:

Immediately send out a text or email to all residents affected
Provide them an update once the issue has been resolved and direct them to an information hub if they need any further details
Send them a letter/email 7 days later apologising for the disruption and informing them of customer service information should there be any further problems.

That’s just in an emergency, imagine if you could set up customer journeys for all sorts of other reasons, e.g planned engineering works, hose pipe bans etc – rather than the typical letter consumers receive.

All this technology exists in the market already and is used very successfully for marketing campaigns. The utilities sector is pretty unique in the requirement to contact customers in these situations – why not take advantage of this powerful technology?

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE TOOLS TO COMMUNICATE THROUGH CHANNELS THAT APPEAL TO THEM

Emergency communication is one thing, but consumers are expecting you to provide them with interesting content. We’re already working with lots of water companies to understand financially vulnerable customers and providing the tools to inform them of social eligibility tariffs, for example, but a key area is understanding what channels a consumer is going to respond to, and having the campaign tools in house to deliver this content.

Customer journeys are used widely within sectors such as auto, retail and leisure – there is no reason why the water sector shouldn’t also embrace this to drive engagement (and increase the C-MEX and C-SAT scores).

David Sealey from CACI, interviewed Gareth Ballard from Braze in April last year, and it’s definitely worth a watch if you’re looking to form human connections with your customers.

MAKE SURE I REALLY UNDERSTAND MY CUSTOMERS AND THEIR NEEDS

We talk about this all the time at CACI – segmentation is our bread and butter. I can’t re-iterate enough – understanding your customers is so important. How would you feel if you received a letter asking you to stop watering your garden so much in a lockdown when you’re in the top floor flat in 30 degrees with no access to outside space? Not great.

Trying to encourage behavioural change can be supported further when we add attitudinal information to a rich demographic segmentation. Lessons can be learnt from EDF’s Smart Meter Roll Out programme, where CACI built out attitudes to understand the drivers for people to get a smart meter, and then built an integrated communication journey to encourage change.

How could this work for the water sector? Well, perhaps something like the below:

Creative One (Environmental Families): Content around family activities to encourage water saving.
Creative Two (Frugal Flat Owners): Content around the money individuals can save around the home by engaging with their water provider, e.g free toilet flushing water savers + a water meter
Creative Three (Nosey Neighbours): Use demand metrics to say how much water a neighbourhood is using vs another within the area – or simply provide a number of free water saving equipment delivered within the area to encourage uptake.

Does any of this resonate? I’m very happy to talk you through any of the above as part of an Art of the Possible session and bring in Subject Matter Experts to really drive forward your customer experience. Just get in touch and I can set up a 45-minute session with you today.

Maximising profit in the e-commerce boom

Posted on: 12 March 2021

THE TURNSTILES ARE OPEN: IT’S TIME FOR INTEGRATED CONSUMER DATA INSIGHT TO LEAP JUMP ON BOARD THE RETAIL LOGISTICS MERRY-GO-ROUND, IN SUPPORT OF EVERY FUNCTION

The explosion of e-commerce in the last nine months is putting fulfilment networks under huge strain. The Covid pandemic has accelerated consumer behaviour by five years in just a few months.

Retail and logistics thinking needs to speed up to the same pace. That’s a tall order for systems, processes and strategies that have evolved gradually over a long period in separate business functions.

Because the pressure for change comes from consumers, the key is to apply historic and predictive consumer data to B2B systems. At the moment, that doesn’t happen consistently throughout the retail fulfilment cycle. Until now, comprehensive, integrated consumer and commercial data analytics have not been available for cross-functional use.

WHO OWNS CONSUMER DATA INSIGHT IN YOUR ORGANISATION?

Today, consumer data tends to reside within the retail and marketing team. It isn’t shared with decision-makers in logistics, supply chain and location planning. They plan their provision and services based on historic performance and their own forecasting models.

Traditionally, consumer data is used at the front end of the retail supply chain. Brands and stores analyse consumer needs and channel preferences to determine their ranges, product specification, pricing, channel mix, positioning and advertising messages. Customer data is readily available from epos and e-commerce tracking to inform procurement, product design and marketing.

Most successful retailers have a strong and established capability to use their own data, supplemented with external market research, to predict and meet consumer demand and trends. this means they can consistently source, stock and market the right goods in their physical and virtual shopfronts throughout the year.

That’s a big tick in the box for the retail, marketing, digital and store operations teams. But what happens next? The process of getting the goods to the customer is handled by the logistics and supply chain team. Do they have the same foresight into customer demand in terms of fulfilment, so the whole process is completed seamlessly for customers?

PROFIT IS A COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY

Customer data staying in the retail silo has an impact on profitability. Procurement mark-up netted against retail operations costs may hit the profit target for products, categories and ranges. But fulfilment and logistics can cancel that out if stockholding isn’t optimised in the right locations or the pricing of universal consumer delivery methods is out of kilter with the real cost of supply.

The logistics team is also crucial in delivering an excellent end-to-end customer experience. Their work is often longer-term, because changing warehouse locations and bringing physical stores online is usually slower than specifying and sourcing a new consumer product.

This is an area where costs and efficiency are often harder to measure and understand as they build up across the operation. There’s a big opportunity to save money and improve performance with end-to-end analysis.

Defining consumer demand in different regions and types of logistics catchment is key for location planners to optimise the use of their existing sites and networks and to determine new store and depot locations.

The final mile has long been recognised as the most expensive part of the fulfilment process. But in fact, the final metre is even more critical. Understanding the exact nature of the address you’re delivering to makes a big impact on costs. The difference between a semi-detached house with easy parking on the driveway and a top floor flat on a red route can be ten minutes or more in courier time and efficiency.

UNDERSTANDING REGIONAL DIFFERENCES SUPPORTS FULFILMENT PROFIT AND EFFICIENCY

The same insights should influence the choices of delivery method that retailers offer to e-commerce consumers. Flat fees for postal or courier delivery may be profitable for sending a small item via the Royal Mail, first class. The same fee doesn’t necessarily cover the cost of transporting a bulky item from a warehouse on the southern coast of England to a domestic address in the Scottish Highlands, using a lorry to move it between depots and an overnight courier for the final leg of the journey.

Logistics managers need to understand likely consumer demand at the same time as retail buyers, in order to feed in accurate costs and make provision for responsive fulfilment. And they need to understand it regionally as well as nationally. It’s this information that allows logistics providers and clients alike to manage and measure the effectiveness of their third party logistics (3PL) activity. As client, you can use this data insight to challenge or work with your 3PL to improve efficiency, for everyone’s benefit.

Profitability is everyone’s responsibility in the retail supply process, from marketing right through to end user fulfilment, whether that’s at store or on the doorstep. Strategic and tactical decisions in all these functions need to be informed by the same consumer data insight. It’s a continuous loop of demand and supply that needs data to flow consistently around, reflecting real-time change so that every department can work to the same demand patterns.

THE MERRY-GO-ROUND IS SPINNING: WE CAN HELP YOU JUMP ABOARD

How do you intervene, given the perpetual motion of this carousel of demand and supply? It’s spinning ever faster with the twin pressures of fast-changing consumer habits and fiercer competition. Where can you jump on to the merry-go-round to set the data flow in motion throughout your retail supply process?

At CACI, we have a unique capability to help you jump aboard and infuse consumer data insight into every function in the retail supply continuum. understanding customer behaviour and preferences is crucial at every stage.

By aggregating small gains throughout the fulfilment process, you stand to make big savings.

We can help you drive value out of data and insight across every business area. From store network strategy to digital channel management, from warehouse optimisation to route planning, we can empower your retail business to deliver goods to consumers rapidly, profitably and competitively across the UK and globally.

We can help make your entire network more efficient and responsive – from stock availability to final metre delivery. Talk to us about driving competitive advantage and supporting sustainable retail growth in the fast-changing world of 2021 and beyond.

Marketing through Covid restrictions and recovery

Posted on: 24 February 2021

Why marketing attribution analysis is the most important weapon in B2C’s armoury this year.

Everyone’s talking about which changes will stick and what the future holds for consumer brands, as global and national economies and commerce reform and recover from the impact of Covid and successive lockdowns.

With tight margins and budgets the reality for most, and caution the watchword even for the most stable and successful organisations, prioritising and justifying marketing spending is key in an unpredictable and fast-changing world.

Improving overall marketing ROI will deliver most value

It’s ironic that cost reduction pressures are also what stands in the way of designating team resources or recruiting specialists to scope and deliver the comprehensive, reliable and granular information that would enable you to dramatically improve marketing ROI.

Most organisations are focused on value, ROI and prioritised spending right now. Marketing Directors need to spend less and get more bang for their buck – and they need to prove they’re doing it effectively. That means making changes and making cuts. But where?

As one marketing director says, “My marketing budget is under serious pressure so I’m scrutinising every activity and channel for signs of underperformance. Any hint of weakness and I pull the campaign. What more can I do?”

You need more insight to cut costs with minimal risk

The problem is that arbitrarily scaling back marketing activities because they feel expensive or look disproportionate on the P&L can have unforeseen consequences for other related activities. You won’t know the hidden impact of these campaigns until too late, when it begins to reveal itself in bottom line sales figures.

These are challenging times for all organisations. Budgets are tight. New channels are developing faster than ever. Consumer trends are volatile. You need to be agile in rapidly changing markets. Rich, reliable and actionable insight is more important than ever before.

How do I sell more with a reduced budget?
What marketing actions should I take when things change?
What impact does each channel have on others?
How do I convince the business that marketing is working?

You need advanced capability in data integration, modelling and measurement

You need to model for growth and changes in your customer and channel mix. You need to know exactly what’s working to engage different customers and where you’re getting strong ROI. You need to measure and model your entire portfolio of marketing and communication activity more rigorously and rapidly than ever before. You can’t afford any bias – for example, relying on analysis from media owners or channels whose interest is best served by more investment from you.

Moreover, adjustments to targeting and positioning can make a dramatic difference to campaign effectiveness. With the right information, you can understand where it’s beneficial to tweak a campaign to optimise it to get more from the marketing investment, and where a campaign is at its maximum potential.

There’s a clear business case for marketing attribution in the post-pandemic world

B2C organisations need access to sophisticated marketing analytics at a time when there’s no slack in the budget for investment in unproven technologies. Happily, marketing attribution analysis is a proven solution. It tangibly improves ROI from marketing activities – and we can help you make the business case based on clear evidence.

At CACI, we’ve developed our marketing attribution approach based on experience gained working with leading global clients that command vast amounts of data and a complex range of marketing campaigns, media and channels. We’re channel, campaign and media agnostic. We can show you the results of optimisation driven by this powerful data insight and share best practice that’s powering the success of leading organisations.

Our short paper 8 key questions you can answer with marketing attribution analysis explains exactly why you need this game-changing insight to fuel your marketing success in your post-pandemic consumer market. Read it now and get in touch if you’d like to discuss how you can put marketing attribution to work for your organisation.

It’s a big question: is your marketing working?

Posted on:

Marketing attribution analytics could help you get some clear answers. But many organisations are frustrated by a lack of objective expertise and resources to deliver it. Our marketing data expert Ed Sewell recommends an accessible route.

What’s really working in your business to drive performance from your marketing spend?

Marketing, Finance and Commercial leaders need a dependable, evidence-based answer. But that’s hard to come by in an increasingly complex channel, media and consumer environment.

Your marketing harnesses a vast array of digital and traditional channels. And you’ll already have a range of measures and evaluations in place for many of them. But to prioritise effectively, you need to put it all together to see the contribution and interdependence of all your marketing activities.

Robust, joined up marketing attribution analysis is the only way you can get to the bottom of it.

WHAT’S SPECIAL ABOUT MARKETING ATTRIBUTION?

Marketing attribution can help you answer key questions that shape your marketing priorities and tactics and directly influence sales performance. For example:

How do I attract and keep the right customer segments?
How well is each marketing channel performing?
What impact do external factors have on my marketing results?
What channels and content should I invest in next?
How do I improve results with reduced budgets?

Detailed, accurate and actionable answers to these questions provide decision-making evidence that you can apply across your organisation and use to formulate a competitive and profitable marketing strategy, ultimately improving results.

The crucial characteristic of marketing attribution analysis is its completeness. It’s an integrated, reliable set of insights that shows exactly what’s delivering ROI and how your activities across all channels inter-relate. The information is current and updates continually, so you can see trends and take action based on real-time market and consumer factors.

WHAT’S THE BEST WAY TO HARNESS VALUE FROM MARKETING ATTRIBUTION?

Marketing attribution is a long way from manually updated spreadsheets or the kind of two-dimensional marketing metrics that are typically used to measure the effectiveness of individual campaigns and channels. It demands specialist expertise and powerful technology, to produce meaningful and clear reporting.

That’s why at CACI we’ve been working on developing a third-party proposition that all organisations can exploit to get rapid results and impact. Based on our experience of marketing analytics across every industry, channel and campaign type, we’ve built an objective and fully integrated marketing intelligence solution that can handle the vast volumes of data that provide a complete picture of marketing effectiveness.

CACI’s marketing attribution analysis is a unique, specialist proposition that we’re able to deliver because of our deep and wide-ranging data insight expertise. It provides complete and continual oversight of all your campaigns and channels, in context of the customer segments you’re addressing and external market factors.

THE ROI OF MARKETING ATTRIBUTION INSIGHT: GET ANSWERS TO EIGHT CRITICAL QUESTIONS

If you’d like to know more about how CACI Marketing Attribution could help you deliver excellent ROI from your activities, read our short paper “Is your marketing working? 8 key questions you can answer with marketing attribution analysis.”

How tactical network automation can help banks respond to a changing financial sector

Posted on: 15 February 2021

The financial services sector has undergone seismic change – even well-established institutions are feeling the pressure from leaner margins and agile new competitors. In response, they’re hungry for new ways to drive efficiency, create revenue streams, and offer enhanced value to customers.

That dual demand – to unlock innovation and agility while cutting process costs – lands squarely at the door of IT.

A smarter, leaner finance sector needs responsive, cost-effective IT

At CACI, our specialists are used to helping financial institutions to optimise their network infrastructure. And we see every day how smart, tactical use of network automation can play a role in meeting the challenge by reducing workloads, improving quality, and meeting regulatory standards.

Automated switch checks improve visibility and accelerate ACI migration

It’s perhaps easiest to see the impact of tactical network automation in an accelerating and de-risking a major project, like network migration.

Next-generation data centre infrastructure is a key foundation for modern, data-driven banking. But achieving that transformation can often encounter unexpected and time-consuming obstacles.

For example, switching from a legacy system Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure can mean executing thousands of commands across hundreds of devices to define the migration requirements of each VLAN.

Instead of doing this manually, we built a script in Python 3, combining community-built packages to connect to each switch, translate the device output, and arrange the data into an easily manageable database.

It quickly extracted the information needed for migration planning and execution – preventing significant project delays, while eliminating the risk of human error.

MAC address checks de-risk migration in advance

Likewise, with ACI each IP address can correspond to one MAC address only. Any switches in the legacy infrastructure that exceed this limit could have a catastrophic effect. Finding them in advance of a migration is crucial – but extremely time-consuming. And missing one is a significant risk.

So on-site professionals from CACI built a solution to attach to each switch and create a report detailing which boxes have two MAC addresses or more.

Again, the automation saves potentially hundreds of engineer hours, and gives confidence that the migration can proceed without the risk of human error.

Self-service port provisioning saves hours and improves service

BAU processes can also benefit from automation – and here, the impact builds cumulatively over time.

For example, server deployment teams rely on fast, accurate port provisioning. As well as the initial configuration, each request requires extensive testing, and when completed manually the work can total dozens of engineer hours per week.

So we developed a proof of concept for a self-service system, where requests are made through a front-end web portal, but the provision and testing are automated.

As well as releasing engineer time and reducing risk, the solution prevents internal clients waiting for their request, accelerating their own work in turn. It also eliminates variations in naming and other standards, and documents each process for compliance purposes.

Bulk element configuration proves compliance without headcount

That compliance element demonstrates why automation is such a good fit for a regulated industry like finance. Because it can do more than just save time and headcount; it can provide documentation.

Each script in an institution’s library serves to document network requirements to be followed by engineers in future, and prove compliance with the relevant network engineering, security, and data sovereignty standards. And because the program is created to fit the bank’s own policies, conformity is built in.

Meanwhile, by eliminating manual configuration errors that could bring down key production environments, automation helps to avoid serious service outages that could result in sanctions from the financial conduct authority.

Quick, tactical wins with a long-term business impact

In these and dozens of other ways, we’ve deployed network automation to solve tactical issues, save financial institutions time and money, and facilitate faster, smarter working.

But the long-term cumulative effect is even more significant. The client always owns the IP in each script we’ve written and the program performs its task repeatably. That means the automation will go on saving time in future – so every solution we create makes the organisation that much more efficient and effective – ready to compete in tomorrow’s financial market.

If you’d like to discuss how we can use network automation to ease your migration, streamline your processes, or make you more efficient, please contact our Network Services experts today.

Retail experts’ post-lockdown predictions

Posted on: 6 February 2021

Prospects for 2021 may seem uncertain in many retail markets. But there are clear trends and opportunities emerging, according to the specialists in CACI’s retail analytics practice. They’ve been working with retailers and studying market intelligence throughout the pandemic, so they have a bird’s eye view of customer and retailer activity and the forces that are driving it.

Like most analysts, they agree that many of the fastest emerging trends were already becoming established before the pandemic took hold. Covid-19 and the diverse consequences of lockdown have accelerated technology development and the evolution of consumer behaviour. Although some people have become starkly digitally isolated, for many million, the digital divide has been narrowed. Consumers have had to embrace digital ways to work and learn remotely and to socialise, engage and transact online.

Sudden and extreme online demand has created pressure on formerly small-scale digital operations. But our three highlighted trends present opportunities for retailers that are able and willing to embrace a sophisticated digital or hybrid model, as economies and nations emerge from lockdown.

TREND 1: HYPER-PERSONALISATION AND HYPER-LOCALISATION

Retail intelligence expert Chris Thompson is Director of Location Analytics at CACI.

t’s clear that by late 2021, data will be integral for retailers to hear the full range of consumer voices and understand their expectations. As a result, hyper-personalisation and hyper-localisation are going to gain momentum rapidly.

What do these terms mean? Hyper-personalisation means creating communications content that we know is directly relevant to the customer – telling them about things they’re already interested in or are likely to want or need next. Hyper-localisation means sending relevant messages to the customer at the right time and in the right place, seizing the moment when it’s convenient or essential to purchase.

When high streets and outlets can re-open to shoppers in person, technologies in-store will recognise that the customer has arrived or is nearby and will suggest products and offers to consumers at the point of consideration. That’s both hyper-local and hyper-personalised.

It all hinges on making sense of the rich and varied customer data that’s more available than ever, because of the swing to digital shopping.

We’re already working with retailers to give them more precise consumer information through the latest data science technologies, so they can diversify format, range and omni-channel services to match local demand precisely.

As retailers look to re-engage customers, the trend will accelerate. Market share has been massively disrupted: real-time, hyper-targeted activity will help retailers stand out and create higher engagement and conversion across all channels.

TREND 2: AUGMENTED REALITY

Hana Butt is a CACI Consultant who specialises in data insight projects for retail clients.

Augmented reality (AR) is going to differentiate retailers as retail markets re-adjust after lockdown. From the warehouse to the in-store virtual changing room, AR and AI technologies are already bridging the gap between physical and digital retail experiences.

Although many shoppers are desperate to get back onto the high street, some will be more cautious, and others will remain loyal converts to digital channels. They’ve embraced the advantages of virtual retail: a great shopping experience with excellent service, proven security and a controllable and healthy environment in their own chosen surroundings.

Not all online retail is like this of course, but the best in the industry have worked hard, particularly during the last year or so, to create an immersive virtual shopping experience. They’ve got the basics right already – good site design, range, availability and ease of use are all standard shopper expectations. But AR and AI help these innovative retail brands to surprise and delight consumers, moving the experience from functional to truly enjoyable. Sephora’s mobile app allows consumers to try out lipstick using the front camera – 45 million people have had a go!

For customers who are happy to be back in-store, AR will help them find information about products as they browse. they might scan a qr code or bar code on the shelf to access rich content immediately that shows the product in action or answers consumer questions.

AI and AR will create convergence between the online and in-store experience – the best of both worlds in both places, if you like.

TREND 3: CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE, ENGAGEMENT AND TRUST

Managing Consultant Chris Lidington helps CACI clients apply insight in the convenience and retail sectors.

There’s been a huge online sales boom during the pandemic – but consumers aren’t necessarily behaving as you might imagine in terms of their shopping choices. Our own Super HALO research reveals that they are staying more loyal to brands they know and trust through a store network.

At first we thought that the shift to online shopping would be underpinned by deal-hunting and a price-driven mindset – after all, it’s easy compare and shop around online. But the brands we engage with are gaining full price sales and observe that consumers are coming directly to their online stores.

It’s not just deal fatigue. Consumers value experience and convenience. For instance, if they’re buying Levi’s jeans, they know that the official Levi’s store will have the full range of current styles and the experience will be reassuring and positive. They trust the brand to provide a quality end-to-end experience, including reliable delivery. Rather than going away to find the same product cheaper elsewhere, they’re choosing to buy there and then.

Brands that are making the most of apps and mobile technology are also seeing a good response from consumers, who like the convenience and utility.

A good example of genuine added value comes from Under Armour, the sports brand. Connecting their retail operation to their running app, they can remind consumers when their trainers have covered enough miles to need replacing and show them the best new model for their needs.

This is making the most of customer engagement – giving the consumer information or a service that they value through natural interaction. The consumer sees the benefit and uses the app regularly, feeding data back to the retailer so they can further build trust by recommending desirable and relevant products. It’s a virtuous circle: the continuing engagement gives the retailer truly personalised insight that keeps pace with the consumer’s changing needs and preferences, making interactions ever more useful and meaningful to the consumer.

If you’d like to find out about technologies and approaches for your post-lockdown retail success, talk to our experts. Contact Chris Thompson CThompson@caci.co.uk Hana Butt hbutt@caci.co.uk or Chris Lidington clidington@caci.co.uk for more insights and advice.

Three opportunities in Food Box delivery

Posted on: 5 February 2021

Looking back at 2020 and we can clearly see that some sectors experienced a lot of pain while others have thrived and grew hugely in demand. A black swan event like a pandemic could not have been predicted, but even before that a shift to online shopping was gaining momentum for years. Last year businesses that were digitally native have fared a lot better than those that relied purely on the physical presence in neighbourhoods and high streets. In Grocery we have seen propped up demand across the board with the unfortunate shut down of the leisure sector, but online delivery and local convenience channels have done especially well.

Food box delivery concept is driven by three big trends in grocery sector, a demand for convenient solutions, personalisation and being able to transact online. This offering has been a part of the grocery channel for a while but has really showed how uniquely valuable it is in 2020. Our recent consumer survey suggests that in 2020 16.5% of respondents ordered a food delivery box and 56% of those who use food boxes order at least fortnightly. Operators that were able to scale up the delivery infrastructure won big in 2020, gaining that initial share of the market. We can now see how the competition in the space is intensifying, food box delivery operators are working hard on differentiating the offer and capturing the desired section of the market. Food box delivery services are now serving a variety of consumer needs, from routine grocery top ups, to value boxes, to unique dining in experiences. 2021 has already seen Morrison’s move into this space with £30 food box offer targeting families, Booths launching its ‘Let’s Cook’ boxes and Parsley Box securing over £5.2m to expand and target baby boomers (The Grocer).

It is clear that food box delivery services will keep growing in importance in 2021. from our recent shopper survey, we know that 18% of customers plan to use food delivery boxes more in the next 12 months with this jumping to a quite extraordinary 31% in London showing the regional variation in demand for food boxes.

It should be acknowledged that different shopper types have different demands and criteria of choice when it comes to choosing whether to use a food box and who to purchase from. For example, the grocery shopper type Families on a Budget who are larger families with multiple, often younger, children living at home plan to use more delivery boxes going forward than the UK average. They typically shop at retailers such as Morrison’s, Asda and Iceland so Morrison’s new family food box offering will have great appeal to these shopper types. In contrast younger, affluent shoppers are seeking health-conscious choices and inspiration in their decision to purchase a food box leaning to brands such as Mindful Chef to fulfil this mission.

THREE CHALLENGES FOR THE FOOD BOX DELIVERY SECTOR TO SOLVE IN 2021

The pandemic has undoubtedly caused a surge in demand as we seek alternative ways of both treating ourselves whilst restaurants are closed and getting our groceries whilst supermarket visits are kept to a minimum. In fact, 38% of those ordering food delivery boxes said one of the main reasons for doing so was to avoid going to the supermarket. The next 6-12 months will be crucial for companies looking to grow a loyal customer base to emerge as a larger sector at the end of the pandemic. As the risk factors of supermarkets begin to decrease food box delivery companies will need to tackle a number of obstacles to remain successful. Here are the three main areas to focus on to drive further growth in the sector in 2021:

Laser focus on customers. Customers desire personalisation and food box delivery companies are in a unique position where they can engage with customers and really understand what ingredients they like or dislike and manage the future interactions better. Real brand growth happens when new customers are added to the brand. Finding new customers and knowing how to tailor your communications will be the winning recipe. But before finding new customers it is important to understand who exactly your current customers are, where else they shop, what brands they like and what is important to them.

Utilising the right technology to stand out and deliver intuitive customer experience. The world of customer data platforms and CRM systems is ever changing and to be at the top, companies need to upgrade and stay relevant. Modern solutions allow you to manage the customer data in real time, analyse campaign impact and code up new customers as soon as they have made a first purchase or inquiry. Customers stumble across different parts of the journey, for example not checking out at the last moment or not finding the right product or promotion. It is important to have a tailored communication stream with those customers to convert them in to the first sale while keeping the acquisition costs low and to ensure the repeat purchase happens.

A successful food box delivery business needs to keep the delivery costs low and serve customers in the most effective manner. Saving money and time on the very expensive logistics side of the business will allow for great ROI and ability to direct funds to customer acquisition and loyalty building. Effective route planning, holding the best-in-class datasets on addresses and providing precise instructions to delivery drivers will be one of the factors that differentiate the market leaders with runner ups.

Food box delivery is an extremely exciting space to be in and the market cap of this sector is expected to grow, however, like in any growing sector it attracts new entrants and the attention of large retailers and FMCG players. Competition intensifies and with more than 20 players in the market some consolidation is imminent. At CACI we can help tackle the big three challenges that are now in front of the sector, building a strong customer understanding and growing organically through customer acquisition, getting the most out of complex data platforms and saving time and costs on logistics.

If you are interested in tackling the above challenges and outcompeting in the crowded space, please get in touch as we have developed unique solutions to unlock growth in the sector.

Please contact Val Kirillovs at vkirillovs@caci.co.uk or Charlotte King at cking@caci.co.uk

The mitigation of unwanted bias in algorithms

Posted on: 14 January 2021

Unwanted Bias is prevalent in many current Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence algorithms utilised by small and large enterprises alike. The reason for prefixing bias with “unwanted” is because bias is too often considered to be a bad thing in AI/ML, when in fact this is not always the case. Bias itself (without the negative implication) is what these algorithms rely on to do their job, otherwise what information could they use to categorise such data? But that does not mean all bias is equal.

Dangerous Reasoning

Comment sections throughout different articles and social media posts are plagued with people justifying the racial bias within ML/AI on light reflection and saliency. This dangerous reasoning can be explained for, perhaps, a very small percentage of basic computer vision programs out there but not frequently utilised ML/AI algorithms. The datasets utilised by these are created by humans, therefore prejudice in equals prejudice out. The data in, and training, thereafter, has a major part in creating bias. The justification doesn’t explain a multitude of other negative bias within algorithms, such as age and location bias within applying for a bank loan or gender bias in similar algorithms where it is also based on imagery.

Microsoft, Zoom, Twitter, and More

Tay

In March 2016, Microsoft released its brand-new Twitter AI, Tay. Within 16 hours after the launch, Tay was shut down.

Tay was designed to tweet similarly to that of a teenage American girl, and to learn new language and terms from the users of Twitter interacting with her. Within the 16 hours it was live, Tay went from being polite and pleased to meet everyone, to a total of over 96, 000 tweets of which most were reprehensible. These tweets ranged from anti-Semitic threats, racism and general death threats. Most of these tweets weren’t the AI’s own tweets and was just using a “repeat after me” feature implemented by Microsoft, which without a strong filter led to many of these abhorrent posts. Tay did also tweet some of her own “thoughts”, which were also offensive.

Tay demonstrates the need for a set of guidelines that should be followed, or a direct line of responsibility and ownership of issues that arise from the poor implementation of an AI/ML algorithm.

Tay was live for an extensive period, during this time many people saw and influenced Tay’s dictionary. Microsoft could have quickly paused tweets from Tay as soon as the bot’s functionality was abused.

Zoom & Twitter

Twitter user Colin Madland posted a tweet regarding an issue with Zoom cropping his colleagues head when using a virtual background. Zooms virtual background detection struggles to detect black faces in comparison to the accuracy when detecting a white face or objects that are closer to what it thinks is a white face, like the globe in the background in the second image.

After sharing his discovery, he then noticed that Twitter was cropping the image on most mobile previews to show his face over his colleagues, even after flipping the image. Amongst this discovery, people started testing a multitude of different examples, mainly gender and race-based examples. Twitters preview algorithm would choose to pick males over females, and white faces over black faces.

Exam Monitoring

Recently due to Coronavirus it has become more prevalent for institutions like universities to utilise face recognition for exam software, which aims to ensure you’re not cheating. Some consider it invasive and discriminatory, and recently it has caused controversy with poor recognition for people of colour.

To ensure ExamSoft’s test monitoring software doesn’t raise red flags, people were told to sit directly in front of a light source. With many facing this issue more often due to the current Coronavirus pandemic, this is yet another common hurdle that needs to be solved immediately in the realm of ML & AI.

Wrongfully Imprisoned

On 24th June 2020, the New York Times had reported on Robert Julian-Borchak Williams, who had been wrongfully imprisoned because of an algorithm. Mr Williams had received a call from the Detroit Police Department, which he initially believed to be a prank, However, just an hour later Mr Williams was arrested.

The felony warrant was for a theft committed at an upmarket store in Detroit, which Mr. Williams and his wife had checked out when it first opened.

This issue may be one of the first known accounts of wrongful conviction from a poorly made facial recognition match, but it certainly wasn’t the last.

Trustworthy AI According to the AI HLEG

There are three key factors that attribute to a trustworthy AI according to the AI HLEG (High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence – created by the EU Commission), these are:

It should be lawful, complying with all applicable laws and regulations;
It should be ethical, ensuring adherence to ethical principles and values; and
It should be robust, both from a technical and social perspective, since, even with good intentions, AI systems can cause unintentional harm.

These rules would need to be enforced throughout the algorithm’s lifecycle, due to different learning methods altering outputs that could potentially cause it to oppose these key factors. The timeframes where you evaluate the algorithm would ideally be deemed based on the volume of supervised and unsupervised learning the algorithm is undergoing on a specific timescale.

If you are creating a model, whether it’s to evaluate credit score or facial recognition, it’s trustworthiness should be evaluated. There are no current laws involving this maintenance and assurance – it is down to the company, or model owner, to assure lawfulness.

How Can a Company/Individual Combat This?

By following a pre-decided set of guidelines continuously and confidently, you can ensure that you, as a company/individual, are actively combatting unwanted bias. It is recommended to stay ahead of the curve in upcoming technology, whilst simultaneously thinking about potential issues with ethics and legality.

By using an algorithm with these shortfalls, you will inevitably repeat mistakes that have been already made. There are a few steps you can go through to ensure your algorithm doesn’t have the aforementioned bias’:

Train – your algorithm to the best of your ability with a reliant dataset.
Test – thoroughly to ensure there is no unwanted bias in the algorithm.
Assess – test results to figure out next steps that need to be done.

Companies that utilise algorithms, or even pioneering new tech, need to consider any potential new issues with ethics and legality, to assure no one is hurt ahead.

We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done

A. Turing

Five takeaways from CACI’s Snowflake for the CMO webinar

Posted on: 3 December 2020

CACI and Snowflake hosted a webinar on the benefits of marketers getting involved in Snowflake’s Data Cloud. Whilst real-time data infrastructure may sound like the focus of the techies, this webinar sets out the why and how of playing an active part in your data infrastructure.

I was fortunate as webinar host to be joined by Paul Coward of the RAC and Jon Ede who leads CACI’s Snowflake practice. As Strategy & Insight Director at the RAC, Paul has been heavily involved in their implementation of Snowflake to drive real-time marketing and insight capabilities. Jon has a wealth of experience in building customer and marketing data platforms, and was an early adopter of Snowflake’s technology.

Five takeaways on snowflake’s data cloud

Failure to engage on data infrastructure may leave marketers with something that is not fit for use.
Data provides an edge for marketers who are seeking to continually optimise marketing activities.
Snowflake enables marketers and IT teams to quickly deliver high value insights.
Optimised marketing comes from a continual cycle of using data to hypothesise, test, measure, learn and improve.
The frictionless data infrastructure that Snowflake delivers connects all the data in your organisation straight to the customer.

Enabling your marketing data transformation

CACI is here to help marketers do amazing things with data. Whether that’s building a Single Customer View, creating clean data feeds for your marketing technology, or augmenting your customer data with demographics and lifestyle variables. There’s a host of technology, consulting and data science work that we can do to improve your marketing results.

If you’d like to see a recording of the event please get in touch!

We will soon be releasing the CMO’s Playbook for Snowflake, if you’d like to register for a copy of that in advance, please contact me with your details!

Rustlr – where goes my internet traffic?

Posted on: 28 October 2020

So, the first question on your mind is likely to be what on earth is Rustlr? And indeed, the name can do with a little bit of explaining.

Similar to how a rustler is someone who rounds up and steals sheep or cattle, our browser plugin Rustlr rounds up and visualises data sent from your browser as you surf the internet. It also (among other things!) tries to alert you of other suspected rustlers out there who may be trying to steal your data. Admittedly the link is slightly tenuous, but it makes for a cool sheep icon, a name that rolls of the tongue, and nods towards our west-country location!

The intention behind Rustlr was twofold: For the user, we wanted to provide a way of increasing their awareness of their security footprint while browsing the web. Whereas we, as a group of developers, wanted to try our hand at making an internet plugin. We wanted to focus on usability and make it easily accessible to those who were not necessarily ‘techies’ or internet security experts.

How it Works

The extension captures HTTP traffic sent from the browser, runs processing on each request to generate a set of alerts, and then displays the results on a map of the world.

The processing step resolves the IP from the hostname, and then uses the Maxmind GeoIP database to find the location the request originated from. It then runs a set of rules on each request, checking for things that look a little suspicious such as the request origin being on a known blacklist, or a password being sent to an unexpected domain. Finally, it sends the resulting set of alerts along with the request to the visualisation layer.

The main visualisation shows a heatmap of the world, built from the count of requests sent to each country, which quickly gives a picture of where data is going. For instance, an unexpected country lighting up when browsing a known website could be an indicator that something odd is going on!

From here the user can drill into the requests sent to each place. They can view request data that an experienced developer may be able to find through Dev Tools. Or they can skip straight to viewing the alerts, which highlight potentially dangerous activity. The icon changes colour as the alerts rack up that, alongside pushed browser notifications, warn the user even when the map is not in view!

Technology Stack

Writing a browser extension, we were tied to using the web development technologies – JavaScript, HTML and CSS. However, we did have room to make a few decisions. We decided to use TypeScript, for all the benefits that it brings, notably reliability and readability.

While the extension API prescribed the structure of the built package, we wanted flexibility in structuring our code. So, we used Webpack to convert our source into the modules that the browser required. We used the browser Web Storage API for persistence to ensure that the whole system could be packaged and loaded in without any external dependencies.

We discussed the idea of using a framework such as Angular or React but decided against it to reduce boilerplate and to avoid introducing another technology into the mix that would have to play nice with the others.

We decided to support both Chrome and Firefox, which can often throw up challenges due to the subtle differences in their APIs. However, we mitigated this by finding a polyfill library that enabled us code against just one common API.

Our main third-party dependency was the open-source mapping library Leaflet which we used for our main visual element. We found it straightforward to use and some of the additional features developed by the open source particularly suited our needs.

Our Development Process

We kicked this off in a team of four and run this as an internal ‘Capability Development’ project. We worked in one-week sprints following the Agile Scrum Framework, albeit a slightly relaxed one, so that we could incrementally build up a more sophisticated solution, while maintaining some focus on the end user.

At the end of each sprint, we demoed to our senior engineering team, who were acting as the customer. One of them played the role of the Product Owner to prioritise our backlog and give us steer in terms of features.

After an initial phase of development of around a month, we had laid down the core structure and implemented many of the initially desired features. This meant that subsequently, it was easy for new developers to pick up the project quickly and slot in their new feature in the established architecture.

UX Journey

In terms of user experience, we began by gathering a high-level idea of what the extension should do from our group of ‘customers’, and how this could be useful. We quickly determined that the plugin should have a visual element, be easy to install and use, and highlight the most interesting information first. As we started developing and receiving feedback, we went on a journey that significantly changed the structure of the app.

A good example of this is that initially we went for a design that popped out the extension in a separate window, and then all further controls were operated from that window. This was seemingly a simple design but it went against the normal convention that browser extensions use – to display a control panel popup below the icon next to the address bar. It was also found to be cumbersome to have to always keep an extra window hanging about while browsing.

Following user feedback during each sprint, we restructured the extension to fit the common pattern, meaning that it would behave as the user expected on their first use, a principal that is at the core of user-centric design!

Final Thoughts

We found that using the Agile development process helped us to stay focussed on the most important features. It enabled us to react spontaneously and change the direction the extension was going in after receiving feedback. It also allowed us to delay some design decisions to when we had a better understanding, instead of trying to guess up-front.

All too often when developing we become over familiar with our product and lose sight of the user’s experience. Sticking to user-centric principles when designing helped us to tackle this to an extent. However, putting our extension in front of someone outside the development team was even more valuable.

We developed using all open-source products, so were very grateful of the strength of the open-source community. It also goes to show that putting together the right mixture of technologies can go a long way.

All in all, we developed an extension that is easy to use, provides useful security information and fits our initial aims!