Marieke Van Bruggen has been coding for nearly 30 years, but she still feels like she’s “learning a lot in this space”.

“This space” being the realm of data and digital analytics, a part of the retail industry that has become increasingly critical to business success.

“There’s been a lot of change, even just since Covid with e-commerce obviously getting much more of a focus than it was previously,” Van Bruggen told Inside Retail.

Currently head of digital analytics and optimisation at GPC Apac, the parent company of automotive retailers Repco and Napa Auto Parts, Van Bruggen studied design at university and is entirely self-taught when it comes to data. Her natural affinity for detail has aided her career progression from e-commerce manager to data expert.

“A former manager used to refer to me as ‘special ops’ because she said I have this ability to dig into the detail of things and find creative solutions for things,” Van Bruggen shared.

While that makes the work sound quite glamorous, the reality is decidedly less so: “It’s not very sexy, but a large part of my role is data hygiene,” she said.

“A fair amount of time needs to be spent making sure all of your platforms and processes are nailed down because you’re really relying on the quality of that data that you have access to.”

This is particularly important for a business with a large portfolio of subsidiaries like GPC.

“We’ve got pureplay, we’ve got omnichannel, B2C, B2B, wholesale, retail, we’ve even got business services in there as well,” she said. “Every single website that I work across has different customer requirements, but it also adds that variety that I just love within retail.”

The problem with a checklist approach

When it comes to putting all of that data to use, Van Bruggen believes that having a holistic view is key to deriving meaning from the numbers.

“My common experience is that a lot of executive teams typically will have a checklist of standard KPIs that they want measured in dashboards, and it’s because that’s what they’ve had in previous businesses or what they’ve heard from industry experts,” she said.

“I really push back and I say, ‘You can have all the dashboards in the world, but in order to find meaning from your data, you actually have to have an idea of your customers’ pain points or your overall business goals.'”

One example she often gives is that a retailer might see their conversion rate decreasing, but if their average order value is going up, their overall revenue could still be increasing.

“If you’re myopically focused on just that conversion number, you’re always going to be disappointed,” she said.

Van Bruggen is also a big proponent of using qualitative data, rather than quantitative data, to understand customer pain points. She works closely with GPC’s customer insights teams and voice of customer programs to identify these pain points and then further analyses the blockages with quantitative data.

“If you’re just looking at quantitative, it’s really hard to find that direction to go in,” she said.

Like many retailers, GPC has a wealth of data across its marketing, finance and other departments, and ensuring the business has a unified customer view is a big area of focus for Van Bruggen.

“I definitely haven’t seen any businesses that I think are nailing it around making sure that their data is not siloed and is applicable across different areas of the business,” she said, though customer data platforms (CDPs) “make a huge difference for those retailers that have lots of data and can stitch it together,” she added.

While incoming privacy legislation in Australia is set to disrupt the way retailers collect and use their customer data, Van Bruggen chooses to view this as an opportunity rather than a roadblock.

“If you can communicate to the customer and say, ‘If you’re willing to share your data with us, this is the benefit that you receive,’ and people see it more as a value exchange, I think that enhances the process,” she said. “It actually forces us to step up and say, ‘If this is what we want to do as a business, we have to make sure that the customer is aware of it, but also appreciates why we’re doing it.'”

The potential pitfalls of retail media

“The real area of excitement for me at the moment is retail media — the pace that it is picking up in Australia and the questions it raises,” Van Bruggen said.

GPC is currently working to understand how customers interact with store installations and fixtures. While she sees a big opportunity to capture a level of customer data that was previously only available online, she cautioned that the impact of retail media on the customer experience is still unclear, and more research is required.

“I’d love it if someone did a study or, if someone wants to help me do a study, because I hypothesise there might be some scenarios where the ad revenue gained from a particular retail media campaign would actually be less than what you would have gained in customer sales had you not had that campaign,” she said.

“I think there’s an overall view that retail media can be the gravy on top of an existing product revenue stream. There’s less of a view of how much cannibalisation there might be from having a retail media campaign that actually distracts customers from purchasing product or maybe makes it harder for them to find.”

When asked what her “gut” tells her, Van Bruggen replied that it probably comes down to the creative material.

“In some cases, you can have an amazing display or an amazing digital screen, but if the content is too overwhelming, it can decrease the customer’s overall engagement. Whereas, when the creative really aligns to the brand and the retailer, it all works in harmony. I think that’s where the real opportunity is,” she said.

While some data experts might take offense to being asked what their gut says, Van Bruggen believes that it still has an important role to play in decision-making.

“I think a lot of people want data to be black and white. They want it to be, X plus Y equals Z, and this is the direction we’ll go in. We’re comfortable with our choice, we’ve been data-driven and we can go to bed and sleep easily at night. But data, on the whole, is grey and really open to interpretation and really open to, in some cases, manipulation, where people can make the numbers look how they want them to look,” she said.

“I get quite frustrated when I see people who quote numbers incorrectly. But particularly in the creative space, I think the gut still has an important element within that. It’s just how the data informs the gut.”

This article is part of Inside Retail’s #IRWD365 campaign, in partnership with Airwallex, to shine a spotlight on inspiring women in Australia’s retail industry and drive tangible change towards gender equality.