£4 million funding to enhance user experience in retail
Getting to know your customer is one of the best ways to improve products and services, and increase sales and profits.
Improving the customer’s experience in the main means commercial gains for retailers but, while retailers have access to increasing amounts of data about customers and transactions, retailers are less likely than to apply this knowledge to business decisions than their peers in other sectors.
Innovate UK are looking to to invest up to £4 million in projects that explore new ways to convert data about people into valuable insights that can improve the user experience for customers and will lead to commercial gains for retailers.
Knowing your customer
This competition will encourage businesses, data scientists and designers to engage with one another to explore ways to gain knowledge and insight from analysis of personal data.
The competition is open to companies of any size working in partnership. Proposals must be led by a business.
Funding and project costs:
- small businesses could receive up to 70% of their eligible project costs
- medium-sized businesses could receive up to 60% of their eligible project costs
- large businesses could receive up to 50% of their eligible project costs
- we expect projects to last 12 to 24 months
- we expect total project costs to range in size from £400,000 to £1 million, although we may consider projects outside this range
Competition information
The competition opens on 16 March 2015, with the deadline for registration being midday on 29 April 2015 and the deadline for applications being midday on 6 May 2015.
There will also be briefing events for potential applicants on the following dates and at the following locations:
- 17 March 2015 – London
- 19 March 2015 – Manchester
- 20 March 2015 – Edinburgh
Words: Peter Cribley