Business Intelligence (BI)

San Jose, Calif. — PayPal has launched PassPort, a website designed to provide small businesses with free tools to expand their global sales. PassPort provides country-specific guidance on seasonal sales peaks; shipping and distribution logistics; currency exchange and fees; and customs procedures and taxes.

In addition to holiday-specific content, PassPort presents buying and selling patterns around the globe and across key corridors. PassPort helps businesses start selling internationally quickly via direct links to eBay Marketplace tools.

Dallas — Speed Commerce Inc., a vertically integrated, omni-channel platform of e-commerce services, has launched Sara X, a pre-configured, feature-rich accelerator for Oracle Commerce.

Retail industry veteran Tom Dowdy has joined Mobee as SVP of business development to drive growth following recent enhancements to the mobile crowdsourcing and retail intelligence platform.

Dowdy is a seasoned CPG sales and marketing executive who joins Mobee from Gigwalk where he served as general manager of retail and brands. Dowdy is well known in the retail industry for founding National In-Store in 1994 and serving as CEO until the firm was sold to Omnicom in 2007.

New York — Managed analytics provider Ugam is releasing a comprehensive electronics category intelligence solution which provides product pricing, assortment and content intelligence to help electronics retailers determine which products to offer, at what prices to sell them, and how to best describe them in order to optimize margins and maximize profitable conversion rates.

Midvale, Utah — Increased selling, general and administrative expenses were a key factor in Sportsman’s Warehouse Holdings Inc. swinging to a net loss of $3.37 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2014, compared to net profit of $4.46 million in the same period a year earlier. The retailer plans to open eight new stores during the fiscal year, including four in the second quarter.

Net sales dropped 3% to $132.4 million from $136.5 million. Same store sales decreased by 18.1%, primarily as a result of the decline in demand for firearms and ammunition.

Hilo, Hawaii — KTA Super Stores, a six-store supermarket chain serving the main island of Hawaii, has finalized upgrading Symphony EYC G.O.L.D. to the latest software version. The new capabilities including direct store delivery (DSD) and invoice reconciliation are the first step in KTA’s incorporation of the latest enhanced version of Symphony EYC’s merchandise management system, which is planned to be implemented across all of its island stores.  

Chicago — BrightTag, a provider of real-time, cross-channel marketing technologies, has changed its name to Signal to reflect its focus on helping marketers strengthen the signals between brands and customers. The company also unveiled its Open Data Platform, a patented suite of products designed to help brands make their data and marketing technologies work better together to drive increased engagement, loyalty and conversions.

Irvine, Calif. — PriceSpider, an online retail marketing service provider, is rolling out a re-pricing engine that enables manufacturers and resellers to automatically adjust pricing based on preset or on-the-fly criteria as it pertains to competitive market activity. The PriceSpider re-pricing engine provides the actionable data needed to set rules, manage strategy and optimize pricing activity with visibility into the market.

Digital business company Acquia launched Acquia Campaign Cloud, offering customers a software as a service that it says is faster and more affordable than similar products like the Adobe Marketing Cloud.

With a single dashboard that’s meant to help manage client campaigns, as well as templates and multichannel delivery opportunities, and the company’s Cloud Site Factory powers the Campaign Cloud. The new service also comes with Acquia Lift and the recently acquired TruCentric, which personalizes experiences with content.

Salt Lake City — Mindshare Technologies, which acquired Empathica in September 2013, announced that the two companies have united under a new corporate entity known as InMoment. InMoment provides a cloud-based customer experience optimization platform, the Experience Hub.