Required Reading: Competing on Analytics

Traditionally, there's a lot of guessing involved in the business of retail. We have to estimate crucial things like how many orders there will be, how much time until stocks run out and what price each product should be. Add to that the less obvious guessing games of how big stores should be and how high rent gets until it becomes a bad deal for us.

A good business relies on predictability. Your level of success is strongly dependent on how well you can see the future. That's why we have to start taking steps to reduce the guessing. So this month, we're studying all about what data we should be gathering and analyzing in order to compete better with a book published by Harvard Business School Press called "Competing on Analytics". Hopefully, we'll learn a lot and be a much better company very soon.