Business Intelligence (BI)

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — O’Reilly Automotive achieved a record quarterly gross margin of 50.8% for the second quarter ended June 30, primarily driven by improvements in acquisition costs, product mix and pricing management, according to president and CEO Greg Henslee.

The automotive aftermarket industry retailer saw sales for the quarter rise to $1.71 billion, a 10% increase from $1.56 billion for the same period one year ago. Gross profit for the second quarter was $872 million, a 12% increase from $780 million for the same period one year ago. 

New York -- Walmart’s Silccon Valley hub, called @WalmartLabs, announced on Wednesday it has acquired Torbit, a cloud-based website acceleration company.

Walmart described Torbit as a “front-end optimization innovator that has been focused on making the web a faster and better place.” Torbit is known for developing measurement, analytics and performance improvement tools to help companies identify and enhance their overall site performance.

By Greg Miller, CrossCom National

When an IT Manager at a retail company proposes to replace outdated technologies because of escalating maintenance costs, his Director may say, “Sorry, I need you to squeeze another year out of the system.”

But it’s not that easy.

The IT Manager doesn’t maintain an inventory of spare parts for the event of hardware failure. If a component needs replacement, he must buy a new one, or source from an aftermarket where prices are high and quality is suspect.

Pittsburgh – American Eagle is opening what it calls a “progressive technology” office in San Francisco. The almost 10,000-squ.-ft. office, located at 49 Stevenson Street, will offer a space for engineers, designers and digital marketing teams to work on American Eagle’s omni-channel initiatives.

Veteran CPG industry executive Richard Lenny was named chairman of the board at Information Resources, Inc., filling the position previously held by Lawrence Benjamin who will remain on the board.

Lenny previously served as chairman, president and CEO of The Hershey Company and also served as group vice president of Kraft Food and president of Nabisco Biscuit and Snacks. Prior to that he was president of Pillsbury, North America and spent 18 years with Kraft prior to that.

Vancouver, B.C. – 99 Cents Only Stores is digitizing its audit management procedures with the ACL GRC internal audit management system. Leveraging the GRC solution, the retailer will replace spreadsheets and shared drives. Anticipated benefits include increased collaboration and visibility among team members, the ability to more easily perform risk assessments and scoring, and ease of workflow adjustment as new issues and risks are identified.

VANCOUVER, B.C. – 99 Cents Only Stores is turning to ACL’s GRC solution to help the value retailer digitize its audit management procedures. 

By leveraging the internal audit management system, the retailer will replace spreadsheets and shared drives. Anticipated benefits include increased collaboration and visibility among team members, the ability to more easily perform risk assessments and scoring, and ease of workflow adjustment as new issues and risks are identified.

ATLANTA — Leading supply chain commerce solutions provider Manhattan Associates reported total revenue of $102.5 million in the second quarter of 2013, compared to $93.6 million in the second quarter of 2012. 

License revenue was $16.1 million in the second quarter of 2013, compared to $15.3 million in the second quarter of 2012. 

By Niklas Bjorkman, [email protected]

In retail we all struggle with data regardless if it is related to chain store management, logistic solutions, business intelligence at the head office, or ERP.  

Seoul, South Korea – South Korean home shopping retailer NS Shopping is deploying mobile and analytics solutions from IBM to improve its omni-channel customer experience and relationship management.

NS Shopping currently sells its merchandise via television, catalogues and online, and will use IBM Smarter Commerce technology to integrate mobile and social channels into its retail environment.