Business Intelligence (BI)

Among the many albums released by legendary rock band The Kinks, “Think Visual” stands as a forgettable collection of generic hard rock songs released in the mid-1980s, when the British Invasion pioneers were long past their creative prime and worn down from years of infighting. However, while the music of “Think Visual” may hold little importance, retailers would be wise to pay close attention to the admonishment of the album’s title.

Stockholm, Sweden -- Starcounter announced that its high performance in-memory NoSQL database powers the supply chain management application utilized by Gekas, a superstore in Sweden visited by 4.5 million customers each year. With 100,000 different products in stock and all items in its warehouse sold out more than three times per week, Gekas uses the low-cost system from Heads, a real-time retail application vendor, to integrate and streamline its entire supply chain, from procurement and its central warehouse to customer sales.
 

ECRM compared retail circular advertising in April 2012 vs. April 2013 and noticed some common overall trends across top retail chains.  While looking at the data, the biggest change from April 2012 to April 2013 came from Lowe’s Home Improvement.

ARMONK, N.Y. -- Consumers shopping online for Mother’s Day gifts was up 15%, spurred by mobile commerce growth of 23% over 2012, according to IBM’s Digital Analytics Benchmark, a cloud-based analysis of the online retail market.

Walpole, Mass. -- Walmart announced the completion of eight new solar photovoltaic (PV) arrays in Massachusetts, celebrating with an event at its Walpole store.

LOS GATOS, Calif. — BJ’s Wholesale Club has tapped FoodLink, a fresh food commerce and traceability platform, to assist in the sourcing and purchasing of fresh produce across BJ’s 15-state chain.

Aston, Pa. -- Actions Services Group has announced a service agreement with Strategic Restaurants Acquisition Co. to provide exterior sign and lighting maintenance services for its 295 Burger King restaurant units.

The two-year maintenance program covers proactive, scheduled quarterly visits to Strategic Restaurants’ units to inspect, repair and/or replace lamps, ballasts, sockets, electrodes, tube supports, wiring within the sign or light fixture LED or non-LED redband, LED or non-LED channel letters, neon transformers and secondary wiring.

Oakland, Calif. -- Global footwear brand Deckers Outdoor Corp. announced it is using the GT Nexus cloud-based supply chain platform to improve supply chain collaboration and visibility.

The parent to the Ugg Australia and Teva labels said the platform will replace EDI and point solutions with a multi-enterprise network solution connecting external supply chain partners to Deckers’ ERP system and providing real-time performance updates.

Duluth, Ga. – Shake Shack has implemented the NCR Pulse Real-Time smartphone application. The app provides real-time, segmented performance metrics and notifications to employee smartphones, generated by a SaaS-based mobile analytics engine and can be integrated with NCR POS platforms.

“NCR Pulse Real-Time is a great tool,” said Giancarlo Fiorarancio, director of information systems, Shake Shack. “It gives you information that you can use right now to improve your results for the rest of the day.”

WESTBORO, Mass. — BJ's Wholesale will leverage Micros-Retail's loss prevention and business analytics solution, XBR Ingenium, to increase its asset protection team’s investigative capabilities and productivity.

Micros-Retail XBR Ingenium will allow BJ’s to generate flexible and behavioral exception reports, so it can focus on key areas of fraudulent activity. The business solution offers an interactive dashboard, so field users can quickly spot high-risk areas in their stores and districts.