Business Intelligence (BI)

New York -- Bob Valair, director, energy & environmental management for Staples, will discuss how energy management is helping the retail chain save resources and add to the bottom line during a Chain Store Age Webinar on Tuesday, June 11, 2 p.m. ET (11 a.m PT).

Valair will also discuss Staples’ ongoing partnership with the EnergyStar program.   

Click here to register.

Chicago -- A lot of IT practitioners talk about “keeping the lights on,” or executing simple but essential tasks such as making sure an e-commerce site is actually up and running. For Michael Hines, VP of e-commerce technology at The Jones Group, keeping the lights on involves a lot more than flipping a switch.

Plano, Texas -- Another executive hired by former J.C. Penney CEO Ron Johnson has apparently left the chain. Kristen Blum, executive VP and chief technology officer, is no longer with Penney, according to various reports that cited a note to investors by Citi analyst Deborah Weinswig. Penney has yet to officially announce her departure, which was also reported by Women’s Wear Daily.

San Diego -- Harmons Grocery, a 16-store regional chain in Utah, is reporting significant benefits from the deployment of in-store solutions from Carttronics. The retailer has implemented  Carttronics’ push-out-prevention, hand-basket protection, cart inventory management, loss prevention video capture and remote system monitoring applications at five locations, with a sixth due to come on board soon.



BENTONVILLE, Ark. — Walmart’s board of directors has given the company the green light to repurchase $15 billion of its shares, effective June 6, the company announced at its annual shareholders meeting. 

This program replaces the previous $15 billion program announced on June 3, 2011. As of June 6, the company had approximately $712 million remaining on the 2011 Authorization. Under the share repurchase program, repurchased shares are constructively retired and returned to unissued status.

As fans of the late ’90s Ben Affleck-Matt Damon film “Good Will Hunting” know, Cambridge, Mass., is often viewed as the province of what are locally referred to as “smaht kids.” I was privileged to be surrounded by “smaht kids” (or their grown-up equivalent) during the recent MIT Sloan CIO Symposium, which was held at Kresge Auditorium on the MIT campus in Cambridge. While there, I got to listen to their insights on how the evolution of IT and business is dramatically changing the role of the CIO.

CardinalCommerce and Unbound Commerce have rolled out a cloud wallet service for online merchants. The cloud wallet service from Unbound Commerce scheduled for release in July leverages Universal Wallet APITM from Cardinal to offer a single point connection to several leading digital wallets. 

LENEXA, Kan. — A little more than two weeks after bringing in former Safeway executive Steve Rempel as its new president and CEO, Balance Innovations has named Jay Atkinson its EVP of business development. 

In this role, Atkinson will be responsible for managing the national sales team, as well as the development and execution of the company's sales strategy.

CHICAGO, Ill. — Mercent, a leading technology company that enables retailers to reach and convert more shoppers online, has signed a strategic partnership with Shop.com, the e-commerce arm of Market America. 

This latest partnership expands Mercent’s portfolio of online shopping destinations supported by its SaaS platform and offers leading retailers the ability to market and sell to millions of consumers on the Shop.com third-party marketplace.

New York -- Debra Jensen, CIO of Charlotte Russe, will share how this 500-store fashion retailer leverages real-time POS data to make decisions that drive profitable growth in a Chain Store Age Webinar on June 6, at 2 p.m. ET (11 a.m. PT).

Hear how SAP HANA-based analytics is providing Charlotte Russe with up-to-the-moment, early indicators of sales velocity, margin and inventory position as well as other key metrics. To register, click here.