Retail Council of Canada
Leaders in Retail Breakfast Series Event
Retail Council of Canada 2019
Tuesday, December 10, 2019
Speaker: Alan MacDonald, Executive Vice-President, Retail, Canadian Tire Corporation
I attended another Retail Council of Canada event this morning to hear the Canadian Tire success story from Allan MacDonald, who runs the retail businesses. It was another very candid and informative session. Diane Brisebois, the CEO of RCC, was on the stage with Allan, and she was asking pertinent and sometimes hardball questions to Allan. Allan did not disappoint and responded with thorough, candid, insightful answers.
CTC is not only doing well, they are making very smart strategic decisions that are helping them grow their business, increase loyalty, protect market share and increase ROI. My biggest takeaway, which Allan mentioned many times, is they make all their business decisions using, in his words, “Data and Analytics”. For over three years this has been their methodology. Allan indicated that their top 200 executives have all talked a one week course on data and analytic decision making skills. He gave a timely example of how data and analytics works. In Nova Scotia they sell 75% left-hand shot hockey sticks and in BC they sell 75% right–hand shot hockey sticks. This is the type of data they have right down to the store level. And, due their loyalty programs and 10 million people who carry a CTC MasterCard, they have it at the customer level.
Commport exchanges EDI procurement data with CTC pretty much every day and being a data company ourselves, we are continuing to promote our Global Data Synchronization Network GDSN services.
