Last night I was watching a documentary on CNBC about WalMart.  No matter what you think about this mega retailer it is still the undeniable king of information management and corporate culture.  A culture that seamlessly folds data from their operations into useful information for "in the store" managers.  As a "technology guy" I know it's easy to get caught up in the "data" within an organization.  Inventory turns, Door Counts, Website Visitors, Page Views, etc but at the end of the day it is all worthless unless we can turn that into information that is useful for the mission of the store management.  Typically in our business that either means a reducing an expense through efficiencies, or increasing revenue through sales.  Of course, somewhere in that difference is something we would all like to have more of - profits.  

One of the things on the program that hit me in the head was that WalMart figured out that if one customer in any of their stores had a bad customer experience and left WalMart forever, never to shop there again, then WalMart as a company would loose $215,000 over the lifetime of that customer.  Let me say that again - loosing one customer from one store is a loss of $215,000 in revenue to WalMart.  What made this more interesting was that this data was brought up in a room of managers who were watching video captures of the check out lines at several stores.  They were looking for abandoned shopping carts - a clear sign that the store did not have enough checkout lanes open and customers were leaving the store - sometimes never to return.  The point was made to the managers that if you tried to save some money in the checkout lanes by staffing down a little, lines would grow and those customers who spent hours gathering all of the things they wanted to purchase had to wait so long that they just gave up and walked out - each abandoned cart sitting on the floor represented a potential loss of $215,000 in revenue.  It was a "hit you in the head with a hammer" visual for the managers.

Now in our industry we don't always have these mature information management systems and we have fewer clear cut indicators like this example - but think about this for a second.  If you loose one customer what is it worth to your dealership?  If you loose one prospect who's just starting out in RVing what is that worth to you personally and then if you add up all of the stuff they buy, trips they'll take, campgrounds they'll visit- what is that customer worth to our industry? 

Recently we've realized that we've become victims of our own data at our little company.  We got focused on the metrics of what we do rather than what those metrics can do for our customers.  We measured ourselves based on the indicators available to us rather than the results those indicators helped achieve for our customers.  And because of it - we're changing the way we do business.  It is hard and painful and has risks - but it's making us a more focused, higher value and ultimately a better company.

What are you doing at your store to turn raw data into useful information? Are you scaling back expenses past a point of profitability (like in our example)?  Are there operational staff changes you have been putting off because you're a loyal employer or advertising you've been keeping because you've always done it that way?  Are you able to get out of the business long enough to look at the business like your customers see it and not how you see your customers?  You might not like what you see. We didn't! But I'll tell you one thing: you'll come out of it a better, more efficient, profitable company with a much better understanding of what makes your business work well and how you provide value to your customers.