Business Analytics

Sam’s Club and the Gallup organization have launched a new quarterly tracking poll that focuses on the smallest of small business.

The poll is designed to look at what Sam’s is calling “microbusiness,” companies with five or fewer employees, that represent a core customer of Sam’s Club and are estimated to total 25 million.

Sunnyvale, Calif. – Application support and maintenance (ASM) may hold potential to deliver $6.8 billion in savings to Fortune 2000 organizations. According to a survey of 300 U.S. and U.K. CIOs released by IT services provider HCL Technologies Ltd., ASM now accounts for 38% of large organizations’ overall IT budget each year.

Talk of nearshoring and a resurgent U.S. manufacturing sector weren’t enough to help the Stanley Furniture Company avoid shuttering a domestic manufacturing plant that employs 400 people.

Following steep losses last year, Stanley said it would close its 562,000-sq.-ft. facility in Robbinsville, NC., where ironically enough the company’s Young America line of Juvenile furniture was manufactured.

After a strong start to the holiday season, harsh weather took a toll on Jos. A. Bank which reported solid profit growth and a 1.8% same store sales increase during what is likely to be one of the company’s final earnings reports as a public company.

At the recent Oracle Industry Connect Conference held in Boston, a number of speakers from prominent retailers including Kohl’s, Hot Topic, and C. Wonder extolled the virtues of “vanilla” implementations of enterprise systems. In this context, vanilla means implementing an enterprise platform with all or many of that vendor’s applications, minimizing customization or use of one-off “best of breed” solutions.

Boca Raton, Fla. – Office Depot Inc. has named Juliet Johansson as executive VP and chief strategy officer, effective immediately. Johansson is a member of Office Depot’s executive committee and reports to Roland Smith, chairman and CEO of Office Depot Inc.

Washington, D.C. – U.S. retailers reportedly have $300 million in refunds with ocean freight vendors, yet they are unaware of this because of invoice errors by their ocean freight transportation providers. According to a report from ocean freight auditing service Ocean Audit, problems with infrastructure of ocean freight carriers are also part of the issue.

Indianapolis – The Finish Line Inc. reported net income of $42.75 million during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2014, up 28% from $33.47 million in the year-ago period.

Net sales grew 17% to $518.87 million from $442.68 million and same-store sales rose 6.3%. Finish Line credited its omni-channel strategy, among other factors, as driving its impressive quarterly performance.

Restoration Hardware Holdings chairman and CEO Gary Friedman lauded the company’s performance in the fourth quarter and fiscal 2013, saying that RH continued to outperform the home furnishings industry by a wide margin.

Atlanta -- Manhattan Associates announced that Floor & Decor, a leading specialty retailer in the hard surface flooring market, has selected Manhattan Associates' transportation management system (TMS) and warehouse management System (WMS) solutions to unify its distribution systems under a robust platform that will support the company's growth. Manhattan's solutions will enable the company to gain more visibility across all networks and automate distribution processes.