Business Intelligence (BI)

CHICAGO — Cargill, an international producer and marketer of food, agricultural, financial and industrial products and services, has unveiled an assessment tool that identifies, prioritizes and quantifies risks and opportunities in its supply chains so improvements can be made to them.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Coupons.com — a leading online printable, pure digital and mobile promotions coupons provider — has made some changes to its executive team.

The company has appointed Matthew J. Wisk as its CMO and Stephen F. Simpson as its VP of production operations.

Armonk, N.Y. -- Retailers and CPG companies with leading stock prices are more likely than their lagging competitors to use Big Data analytics to understand and adjust to customer needs. According to a study of 325 senior retail merchandising executives conducted by IBM Center for Applied Insights in conjunction with Planet Retail, 65% of leading retail merchandisers feel Big Data analytics is critical to their business compared to just 38% of other retail companies.

Santa Fe Springs, Calif. -- Sona Enterprises, a direct wholesaler/distributor of more than 3,000 SKUs to gift shops, travel agencies, camping and hiking outfitters, auto dealerships/parts stores/repair shops, jewelry and convenience stores, has improved upon manual warehouse management procedures using the AcellosOne warehouse management system (WMS).

Redmond, Wash. -- In an internal email to all employees, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced a sweeping internal realignment he said will build upon a strategy launched last year to bring Microsoft more fully into the devices and services market.

The company will reduce emphasis on its traditional strong point of consumer and business software, such as the Windows OS and Office suite of desktop applications, and focus more on computing devices such as Xbox and Surface and on services delivered to mobile device users.

London -- Wm Morrison Supermarkets said Thursday it will have the technology systems, online presence and c-store counts by 2015 to significantly close the gap on its closest competitors.

Britain’s No. 4 grocer trails Tesco, Wal-Mart's Asda and J Sainsbury in annual sales. Its CEO Dalton Philips is optimistic about the chain’s ability to compete. “I've only been here three years,” he told Bloomberg. “There was no plan for online, there was no plan for convenience and we had systems, which were 20th century.”

Boston -- Retailers need to carefully plan ahead in a number of areas to ensure they receive maximum ROI on investments in mobile technology, according to a new report from the Universal Commerce Innovation Exchange and Aite Group.

The areas, detailed in the “Strategies for Mobile Investments,” report, include:

Madrid, Spain – Spanish apparel retailer Grupo Cortefiel is supporting growth across multiple fast-moving product categories and Springfield, Cortefiel, women’secret and Pedro el Hierro retail brands using product lifecycle management (PLM) technology from Centric Software Inc. Grupo Cortefiel will deploy the Centric PLM suite to users in its costing, design, product development and product management departments.