Data Management

By Mac Nadel, [email protected]

Reading, England -- Tesco has committed to the Microsoft platform in an eight year, world-wide agreement. The deal is designed to enable the U.K.-based retailer to improve productivity, decision-making, knowledge sharing and operational excellence across the 14 countries in which it currently operates.

The agreement will underpin Tesco’s strategic objectives of growing its international presence; expanding its non-food business; and offering a broad selection of retail services such as banking, online and mobile. 
 

Less than six months into her role as Walmart’s EVP global customer insights, Cindy Davis rocked the retail analytics world this week with news that Walmart would resume sharing sales data with Nielsen.

The development comes as Walmart is looking to do a better job of leveraging shopper insights as a means to grow sales and follows the creation in February of a new global customer insights team led by Davis. She previously served as EVP membership and marketing at Sam’s Club and joined the company in the fall of 2007.

New York City -- Wal-Mart Stores said its Walmart and Sam's Club divisions will now report their U.S. sales data to Nielsen Holdings, which will become the retailer's primary provider for market information, tools and training, the companies said in a joint announcement on Thursday.

Nielsen gathers and analyzes sales information from a variety of U.S. chain stores, giving manufacturers, Wall Street analysts and others a glimpse at how products are selling.

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. — Staples has announced the promotion of Christine Putur to CIO. In her new role, Putur will have global responsibility for information technology strategy and execution. Putur will report to John Mahoney, Staples vice chairman and CFO.

"Chris has demonstrated great leadership at Staples," said Mahoney. "She has deep knowledge of our customers and company with proven ability to align information systems to business goals. Chris will drive the IT organization as an important part of our success in the years to come."

Framingham, Mass. -- Staples announced the promotion of Christine Putur to chief information officer. In her new role, Putur will have global responsibility for information technology strategy and execution.

Putur joined Staples in 1999, and has since held various leadership roles on the company’s e-commerce, technology strategy, program management and US Retail technology teams. She most recently served as senior VP information systems for the company’s North American Delivery businesses.
 

Dallas -- A survey released by Lucernex Technologies that polled the National Retail Tenants Association members about preparedness for the upcoming FASB changes found that, for the most part, retailers are generally not ready for the new rules to take effect.

In the NRTA membership survey “FASB Preparedness in the Retail Industry,” five key findings were revealed:

New York City -- Footwear manufacturer and retailer Skechers U.S.A. said Tuesday it has upgraded and expanded its Oracle Applications investment, implemented Oracle Database and moved to Oracle On Demand to support rapid growth across its retail and wholesale channels.

The new business information systems are part of a larger initiative for the billion-dollar-plus footwear company to fuel growth, reduce total cost of ownership and enable the business to respond faster to market opportunities.

New York City -- Chain Store Age will hold a Webinar on Tuesday, June 14, at 2 p.m., ET (11 am PT) on how Best Buy has streamlined its business with the help of a master data management solution from IBM. Register today and take a chance to win a free iPad.

Learn from Best Buy how the company has realized several advantages, including ensuring that data is accurate and consistent across all selling channels and improved the customer experience across the same, by deploying the IBM InfoSphere Master Data Management (MDM) solution.

Redwood Shores, Calif. — Oracle on Thursday unveiled a prebuilt business intelligence application for retailers.

The new application, Oracle Retail Merchandising Analytics, uses Oracle Business Intelligence applications to access and analyze data from multiple applications such as financial and workforce management, customer relationship management (CRM) and retail operations.