Illustration by Hanna Barczyk for WSJ.

During a panel he moderated last week in partnership with Fashion Tech Forum, INDX and the Capsule tradeshow, PAPER Magazine‘s Chief Creative Officer Drew Elliott remarked that while brands used to be obsessed with their social media following, they’re now constantly monitoring Google Analytics.

While it was meant as something of a joke – social media followers are still a source of extreme scrutiny for many brands, we’re sure – there is a lot of truth behind the sentiment. To put it simply: now more than ever, data is shaping how forward-thinking companies make decisions. Data can be applied against nearly every aspect of a business, from hiring to investing to something as seemingly trivial as how models are instructed to pose in photos used for e-commerce.

If there’s any downside to the infusion of available data, it may be that it comes at a human cost; as The Wall Street Journal pointed out this week, in many retail companies, data is swiftly replacing the traditional role of chief merchant.

“Companies increasingly are relying on number crunching rather than a top merchant’s instinct as they try to combat sluggish sales and changing shopper behavior,” write the article’s co-authors Suzanne Kapner and Joann S. Lublin. “Driving the trend are big-data tools popularized by online retailers that take the guesswork out of picking goods.”

At Wal-Mart, the writers report, the chief merchant post was eliminated altogether. For leading companies that do keep one on staff, like Target and Kohl’s, the paper notes that “along with that ‘right brain’ creativity, chief merchants are now being asked to master ‘left brain’ analytical skills.”

It’s a sentiment that echoes the words of Fashion Tech Forum founder and CEO Karen Harvey in an op-ed for Women’s Wear Daily published in 2013 discussing the industry sea change.

“Instead of bemoaning the loss of an era when talent fit into a neat box — i.e., merchant, operator, financial — and grieving the death of merchant training programs, we must respond to this new reality in which the Merchant King dynasty is giving way to a new reign of the Marketing King,” Karen said at the time, using the successful tenure of Natalie Massenet at Net-a-Porter and Angela Ahrendts’ time at Burberry as examples of leaders who think like marketers.

To that end, the future isn’t necessarily one of computers replacing humans. Data can do much of the heavy lifting for companies who put it to use, but there does still need to be nuance applied, specifically when it comes to understanding your customer.

“The problem is, [merchants] are often paying attention to the wrong data, and they’re not trained to read and analyze the most important information coming through the pipeline today,” Karen noted, recommending brands adopt a corrective course for rethinking their approach to the traditional merchant role that includes, “a laserlike focus on the consumer, integration of comprehensive data, storytelling, and a holistic perspective that cohesively connects across all channels.”

“By being closest to the consumer and deeply understanding media, marketers are the new merchants,” she continued. “Consumer intimacy was the role of merchants before they became number-crunching analysts. The best merchants are still those who are closest to the consumer.”

For more on Karen’s prescient thoughts on the topic, revisit her piece for WWD here.