Business Intelligence (BI)

The ability to create an integrated and personalized user experience across all channels is the promise of a new omnichannel grocery solution from Grid Dynamics.

With the supermarket world evolving rapidly and shoppers demanding increased integration between physical and digital, Grid Dynamics released its Omnichannel Grocery Platform as an extension of the SAP hybris ecosystem of solutions. Citing statistics from BI Intelligence, Grid Dynamics said 3.3% of current U.S. grocery spending is online and that figure is projected to increase to 20% by 2018.

Denton, Texas - Sally Beauty Holdings Inc. has chosen MetricStream's Store Audit Management solution, to be deployed over MetricStream GRC Cloud. The solution will provide Sally Beauty Holdings with an integrated audit system to manage store compliance reviews, security, inventory control, and other operations across their stores in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

New York - Online specialty apparel retailer Bare Necessities is using the Experian Marketing Suite to plan, manage, execute and optimize all of its customer interactions in real time across any channel, all from within a single system. The Experian platform integrates customer data from any source and channel into an always-fresh central repository or more effective targeting, triggering and personalization of marketing campaigns.

New York -- In today's data-filled world, many retailers are missing some of the most basic — and important — metrics of all: store data and conversion rates. Join this Chain Store Age Webinar on Jan. 29, 2 p.m. (EST), and learn how the insights gained from this data can give companies an edge in today's hypercompetive, omnichannel retail environment.

In addition to educating attendees about the charitable activities of Retail ROI and presenting a heartfelt session from Katie Meyler, founder of Liberian non-profit More Than Me and a 2014 Time Person of the Year for her Ebola prevention efforts, this year’s Super Saturday event in New York focused squarely on customer experience. A variety of industry experts across a range of panel discussions all returned to the crucial need for technology-enabled, seamless customer experience.

Two technology trends stood out above all others at this week’s NRF Annual Convention. First, retailers are becoming aware that omnichannel inventory transparency is the back-end platform supporting the front-end seamless customer experience they have been building the past few years. Being able to see all inventory across all channels in real time is the key to enabling omnichannel processes such as shipping and fulfilling from store, centrally managing orders from multiple sales channels, providing “endless aisle” access to full inventory.

New York – Even when retailers achieve compliance with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard, they often fail to maintain it. According to the upcoming 2015 PCI Report from Verizon Enterprise Solutions, fewer than one-third of retailers studied were still PCI-compliant less than one year after being validated.

Burlington, Mass. – Demandware Inc. has agreed to expand into in-store retail sales by acquiring Tomax, an enterprise cloud software company that provides an integrated solution for retail POS and store operations. Total purchase price will be about $75 million, including $60 million in cash and $15 million in contingent retention-based payments.

St. Louis -- Ikea plans to install solar energy panels on its 380,000-sq-ft. St. Louis store, due to open in fall 2015. Panel installation will begin this spring, with completion before the store’s opening, making the project the largest rooftop solar array in the State of Missouri.

The store’s 259,000-sq.-ft. solar array will consist of a 1.28-MW system, built with 4,085 panels, and will produce approximately 1,780,000 kWh of electricity annually for the store, the equivalent to reducing 1,227 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2).

Camp Hill, Pa. - Rite Aid Corp. has increased its borrowing capacity to $3 billion as part of a refinancing of an 8% senior secured notes that are now due in January 2020. Borrowing capacity will increase to $3.7 billion when the notes are paid.

Rite Aid expects, at current rates, to save approximately $20 million in annual interest expense, based on a $3 billion facility, and approximately $50 million in annual interest expense, based on a $3.7 billion facility and the redemption of the notes.