Business Intelligence (BI)

MINNEAPOLIS — Target announced that it has temporarily suspended its efforts to sell its credit card receivables portfolio. The company said it remains committed to selling the portfolio on appropriate terms, but based on discussions with potential partners the company has determined that it is not in its best interests to finalize a transaction at this time.

New York City -- The Grupo Pao de Acucar, the largest retailer in South America, has selected the SAP Carbon Impact OnDemand solution to monitor and manage carbon emissions and energy consumption in each of its 1,832 stores. The solution, from SAP, will help the group, long recognized as a sustainability leader for retailers both in Latin America and globally, to more effectively control greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increase the data quality of environmental reports submitted to financial and sustainability regulatory agencies.

NEW YORK — Retailers that are looking to access their store sales and foot traffic now can do so anywhere and anytime with a new, free mobile application from ShopperTrak.

ShopperTrak said its new mobile app provides retailers with remote access to the following data &mdashh; key metrics, hourly performance and ShopperTrak Power Hours — which are displayed in an easy-to-navigate graph enhanced by charts. Additionally, the app also provides free weekly foot traffic reports for five major U.S. markets for non-ShopperTrak customers.

DULUTH, Ga. — NCR announced Monday the introduction of a point-of-sale system that will allow independent retailers to manage transactions, track sales and inventory, process credit cards and market to customers on both touch-screen terminals and Apple mobile devices.

The system is a cloud-based platform that NCR said would give independent retailers a multichannel "sell anywhere" capability.

New York City -- Kronos Inc. said Monday that Family Dollar is using its suite of workforce management solutions to control labor costs, minimize compliance risk, and improve productivity of more than 55,000 Family Dollar employees across 7,000 stores.

Atlanta -- Retail analytics solution provider QuantiSense said Monday that Urban Outfitters has licensed its full suite of solutions including QuantiSense Merchandising, Direct and Store Ops.

Urban selected the QuantiSense Decision Orchestration Platform, which combines business intelligence, data warehousing and sophisticated retail analytics into role-based, actionable and repeatable processes.

Smarter decision-making is a goal all retailers have, and now Target should be in an even better position to execute on that objective following a major agreement with industry leading data warehousing and analytics provider Teradata.

New York City -- Consumer confidence rose more than forecast in January, reaching its highest level in eight months amid signs of an improving labor market.

The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary index of consumer sentiment increased to 74 from 69.9 at the end of December. The median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey called for 71.5. The measure has increased 9.9 points in the last two months, the biggest such gain since April-May 2009.

Riverside, Calif. -- A McDonald's restaurant in Riverside, Calif., has been LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold certification. It is the chain’s first location west of the Mississippi, and only the fourth in the United States, to receive the prestigious designation. Other LEED-certified McDonald's restaurants are located in Cary, N.C., Savannah, Ga. and Chicago.

BRUSSELS — Belgian supermarket operator Delhaize Group, which operates the Food Lion, Bottom Dollar Food, Harveys, Hannaford Supermarkets, Reid's and Sweetbay regional banners in the United States, said Thursday it will close 113 Food Lion stores and eliminate the Bloom banner as part of a reorganization. The Fool Lion stores slated for closure are primarily in markets in which the company has the least store density.