Business Intelligence (BI)

By Paul Jeruchimowitz, [email protected]

The torrent of customer feedback unleashed by e-commerce and social media is a good thing, as long as companies are able to mine the data to identify problems and improve operations.

To help retailers and consumer packaged goods companies address that challenge Empathica, a customer experience management solutions provider, and Semantria, a provider of multi-lingual text analytics, have joined forces to offer new natural language processing capabilities.

New York -- A report released Friday found that confidence among American consumers declined in April to a nine-month low. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary index of consumer sentiment declined to 72.3 in April from 78.6 a month earlier, lower than Bloomberg’s earlier estimates that called for a flat reading.

The decline reflects consumer pessimism about the economy and continuing effects from the increased payroll tax.

London -- Brooks Brothers will adopt eCommera’s decision intelligence tool, DynamicAction. Designed to turn big retail data into prioritized actions, the solution integrates siloed data into a commerce-specific cloud solution which will allow the retailer to identify optimization opportunities to improve its overall online commerce performance.
 

FORT WORTH, Texas — Pier 1 Imports reported net income of $61.7 million, or 58 cents per share, for its fourth quarter. For the fourth quarter ended Feb. 25, 2012, the company reported net income of $115.2 million, or $1.04 per share.

Jerry Murray, the Walmart finance VP who called the chain's early February sales "a total disaster" in an email made public by Bloomberg, has left the company, effective April 5, according to a Reuters report.

Wal-Mart Stores has confirmed the report, telling Reuters that it was Murray's decision to leave and that his last day at Wal-Mart was Friday.

By Rafi Musher, [email protected]

Aston, Pa. -- Action Services Group, a national retail and commercial lighting, sign and electrical maintenance and service company announced a service agreement with Morgan’s Foods Inc., operator of KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut Express and A&W restaurants under franchises licenses, to perform sign and exterior lighting service and maintenance for 73 of their franchise units.

BOSTON — Roam, a leading mobile commerce platform provider, has appointed Scott Goldthwaite as SVP operations. In this role, Scott will assure that the firm’s operations and business processes are aligned with the rapidly evolving needs of its customers as they deploy mobile point of sale solutions. This includes the management of Roam’s Help Desk, IT, data center operations, payment gateway and quality assurance functions.

BENTONVILLE, Ark. — Walmart has announced a $1.6 million donation to the Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC), a U.S. based NGO, to establish the Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) Academy in Bangladesh. Sida, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, is also a partner in providing support for the new Academy.