ent up by five per cent? What would happen if you added the product line you are certain won’t sell? What would happen if … This is probably sufficient to make the point that you probably don’t know the answer. Unless you have actually done it (recently) you cannot know. You can anticipate, you can guess. You can argue. But you don’t know. But it does not matter. What does matter is whether you can find out. Do you have the systems and the disciplines in place to assess the impact of these (or any other changes) you make in the business? I ask because: a) They do: E-commerce operators have a significant advantage in that they know how their customers behave. They constantly change and tweak every aspect of their site and they monitor the result because it they can. b) You don’t: Much of the consulting work we do for the retail supply chain in the retail space always, and I mean always, finds that SME retailers have poor systems/controls and consequently poor data. For a bricks and mortar retailer to compete effectively, you have to level the playing field. You have to know stuff. And in order to know stuff you have change things and track what happens. Guessing is no good, because the people eating your lunch aren’t guessing. Relying on past experience is no good because the past does not equal the future. There is no substitute for making your decisions based on hard data. Your intuition must pick the path of most opportunity, but rely on the numbers to keep you on course. Not knowing the answer does not matter, but being able to find out is the difference between success and failure.