Improve Customer Relations with Top Rate Data Warehousing

The battle is for supremacy in the grocery market, the battlefield is Texas, and the combatants are HEB (Howard E. Butt) and Walmart. I am HEB's newest marketing and information technology strategist (see disclaimer below). In the following pages, I will describe the current market environment of the two major combatants. Then, I shall lay out a strategy for HEB, through the effective use of data, to gain market share and become the leading grocer in Texas.

Currently, Walmart controls approximately 23.4% of the Texas grocery market. HEB is a close second with 23% (1). Walmart's success comes from an efficient distribution system and an outstanding pricing program derived from analysis of data from their extensive data warehouse (2). HEB also has a substantial data warehouse and marketing program, but those alone are not enough to keep them competitive with Walmart. HEB also performs what I would consider to be a form of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). There are numerous examples of HEB changing products or policies at a particular store based on the customers who frequent it (3). Many industry analysts believe store tailoring is necessary to gain some type of edge to compete with Walmart (4). Keep this idea in mind, because I plan to expand it as I explain the strategy for the future at HEB.

What do we (HEB) need to do to continue to compete with Walmart? My plan involves the use of technology and data to create an intelligent retailing experience that can be tailored to the individual. We will establish an active CRM program which will include a near real time data warehouse function. This program will result in the expansion of the current Teradata data warehouse to include customer specific data. Once data is gathered and properly analyzed, we will use other technologies and methods to complete the experience. How will we do all this?