A digitalisation of society has led to the creation of a new economic regime in which strategic data is, par excellence, the fuel that drives the entire system.
They really are the new black gold, and the truth is that you only have to touch the concept of "algorithms" to realise how important they are for a given message to reach the consumer.
Let's start by analysing what strategic data is and how it can be collected by business intelligence, i.e. analysis tools for debugging and categorising information, such as REDUNIQ Insights.
What is strategic data and how can it be collected?
You may be thinking that strategic data refers to personal information protected by lawBut that's not the case.
Among those that can be considered strategic data are:
- Purchase history: when a consumer makes several transactions with an online payment solution, they end up leaving behind a trail that is commonly referred to as history. Based on this history, an online shop can, for example, send newsletters or offer promotions on products similar to those the customer has previously purchased, thereby increasing the likelihood that they will buy again;
- Navigation and traffic data: This type of data helps a business to understand how customers reach them and is important for, for example, optimising a sales site for mobile devices;
- Payment method used: based on the way your customers pay, you can adapt the payment methods you make available to them so that they have a more convenient and flexible shopping experience, which will increase the number of sales and the average ticket;
- Feedback: comments and criticisms left on the business's social networks or in the comments section of the online shop itself can be collated and used as insights to improve customer service.
In order to collect all this data, first of all, it is essential that your business strictly complies with European data protection regulations, namely the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Personal Data Protection Act(LPDP).
This should be coupled with the provision of secure payment forms that use, for example, data protection and encryption technologies to prevent information from being stored in plain text format.
Thirdly, it is essential that you offer payment methods protected by the most advanced security protocols on the market, such as the the case of PCI-DSS, a protocol that in Portugal is only held by REDUNIQ.
As far as data collection itself is concerned, it starts with the payment solution you choose, as this will give you access to data on payment metrics (average value, payment method, etc.), which can then be further developed by knowledge solutions such as REDUNIQ Insights.
In addition to macroeconomic sales reports on the Portuguese transactional universe, REDUNIQ's analysis tools allow the study to be narrowed down and give you a better insight into consumer behaviour, namely their payment habits (average ticket, nationality, payment method, etc.).
This is essential not only when choosing the types of transactions you should accept, but also when defining the products/services you offer and the support you provide to customers before, during and after the sale.
How to analyse buying patterns to identify opportunities
Using REDUNIQ analytical tools, CRM systems and solutions such as Google Analytics, you can also analyse sales in order to find patterns that can help you identify business opportunities.
What are these standards?
What products were purchased, what means of payment were used to complete the purchase, what was the average amount spent on each purchase per customer, what times of day saw the most purchases or what number of customers made the purchase? abandoned cart at checkout.
These are questions whose answers will give you insight into some purchasing patterns that will be important in creating the sales strategies best suited to consumers' needs.
Examples of strategic decisions based on real data
Based on the answers to questions about buying patterns, you can, for example, target "happy hours" at times when you receive fewer customers (thus stimulating deader times of the day), tailor payment methods and customer service to your customers' profiles or change the type of product and service your business offers.
To better illustrate what we've just said, let's look at a practical case using data from the infographic on the year-on-year change in turnover of Portuguese retail businesses, which can be found on REDUNIQ Insights.
If you have a tourism-orientated business (local accommodation, restaurant, guest house, etc.) and want to know if it's worth introducing the payment solution DCC - Currency Conversionwhich, in practice, allows you to accept transactions in the customer's home currency, this report informs you of the origin of payments he received.
In this case, with regard to the data obtained throughout June 2025, it can be seen that the weight of foreign invoicing represented 24% of the total invoicing of national businesses - 7% more than in January of the same year.
If, on the other hand, you are considering investing in a retail businessIn addition, petrol stations were the sector in which turnover grew the most compared to June 2024 (+51%), followed by food retail (+18.3%) and healthcare (13.4%).
You can also request a detailed infographic specifically tailored to your business in order to discover trends, identify consumption patterns and dynamics, understand customer preferences in different regions of the country and obtain performance indicators.
In this way, you can carry out strategic planning based on detailed real-time data to help guide your business towards success.
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