Business Intelligence (BI)

Honolulu -- Foodland Super Market Ltd recently launched a new mobile app for both iPhone and Android. The app, built in partnership with mobile commerce provider DoubleBeam, debuted on Jan. 29 and has more than 19,000 downloads in the first three weeks.

The Foodland app was designed to make the grocery shopping experience more convenient and save customers time and money. Foodland customers can load their Maika`i loyalty cards to their mobile devices, view their Maika`i point balances and track their progress toward earning My

Milwaukee – Roundy’s Supermarkets has selected Symphony EYC Customer Insights behavioral insights platform and expertise to enable customer-centric business processes. With Symphony EYC, Roundy's will gain and leverage consumer insights to optimize product selection, customer communication and other critical functions across all Roundy's grocery stores and pharmacies throughout the Midwest.

When preventing the type of data breaches that have recently gotten the names of several major retailers in the news for all the wrong reasons comes up, the discussion focuses almost exclusively on what type of technology should be employed to prevent them. IT is certainly a cornerstone of any retailer’s data security defense, but as explained in a Tech Boot Camp session at Chain Store Age’s 50th annual SPECS conference, a dose of common sense also goes a long way toward preventing unwanted visitors from entering your company’s network.

New York -- Target Corp. on Friday acknowledged its security software picked up on suspicious activity after a cyber attack was launched, but it decided not to take immediate action. The chain also advised that its security breach last year could be even more extensive than reported so far, Reuters reported.

St. Louis - Brown Shoe Company beat internal expectations with net earnings of $6.2 million during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2013, up 55% from $4 million in the same quarter of the prior year. Net sales dropped 3% to $600 million, from $618.7 million.

Austin, Texas – In addition to wanting to efficiently find and purchase products, online shoppers also want to have fun. According to a new survey from Compare Metrics and The E-tailing Group, 70% of shoppers want to go online to browse and have fun, but find current online shopping experiences uninspiring. When asked about their discovery experiences on top retail sites, shoppers gave a “mixed bag” average rating of six-out-of-10. Other key takeaways from the study include:

BRENTWOOD, Tenn. -- Tractor Supply Co., the largest rural lifestyle retail store chain in the United States, announced that Robert D. Mills has joined the company as senior VP and CIO, succeeding James Callison, who is retiring. As part of the succession plan, Callison will stay with Tractor Supply until a smooth transition is completed.

Armonk, N.Y. -- With consumers engaging more directly with businesses through mobile and social media, more than 60% of CIOs will focus more heavily on improving the customer experience and getting closer to customers, according to a new report released by IBM.

The report, entitled "Moving from the Back Office to the Front Lines — CIO Insights from the Global C-suite Study” is based on face-to-face conversations with more than 1,600 CIOs from 70 countries and 20 industries worldwide.

Lakewood, Colo. -- Einstein Noah Restaurant Group Inc. has adopted MicroStrategy as its enterprise analytics standard. The company said an expansion of MicroStrategy licenses will allow it to rapidly deploy and extend its mobile application that provides store-level information to its management team.  

Minneapolis – Target Corp. reportedly had early notice of the holiday data breach that exposed the personal and financial information of millions of customers but did not act upon it. According to Bloomberg, a $1.6 million security application called FireEye notified Target of a possible intrusion in to its network, but the retailer failed to respond.