Predictive Analytics

Chelmsford, Mass. -- The Kronos Retail Labor Index edged down to 3.8% in April from a March level that was revised three-tenths lower. Even with declines over the last two months, the Retail Labor Index remains above levels seen over the last few years, averaging 4.0% over the first four months of this year, up from 3.5% last year. (The Index is defined as the ratio of hires to applications within a given month, expressed as a percentage. A level of 3.0) means that for every 100 applications received, three hires occurred)

By Robert E. Walters, Theretailequation.com
 

Armonk, N.Y. -- IBM  announced a definitive agreement to acquire Tealeaf Technology, San Francisco, a provider of customer experience analytics software that helps organizations to gain intelligence and react more swiftly to consumer trends in today's digitally transformed marketplace. Financial details were not disclosed.

The acquisition is expected to close in second quarter 2012.

Houston -- After a thorough evaluation of major leading profitability systems, Cabela’s Inc. has selected Acorn Systems’ Performance Analyzer because of its expertise in profitability management and its ability to provide a flexible, scalable and elegant platform to drive true net SKU profitability analytics.

Woonsocket, R.I. -- CVS Caremark reported Wednesday that profit for the quarter ended March 31 rose 9% to $776 million, compared with $713 million in the year-ago period.

Revenues surged 20% to a record $30.8 billion boosted by rival Walgreen’s termination of its Express Scripts program, which moved Walgreen customers over to CVS. The results beat Wall Street’s expected $30.3 billion in revenue for the quarter.

Same-store sales climbed more than 8%.

Chicago -- A report released Tuesday by ShopperTrak found that consumers are expected to shop and buy more in the week leading up to Mother's Day than they did last year.

According to the report, national retail sales, when compared to the same period last year, will rise 6% in the week leading up to Mother's Day, and foot traffic will increase 3.7%.
 

Hoffman Estates, Ill. -- Sears Holdings announced the launch of a wholly owned subsidiary called MetaScale, that will provide data-management services.

Sears sees the venture as a natural expansion of the resources it has spent to build the infrastructure it needs to manage data for its more than 4,000 Sears and Kmart stores nationwide.

Armonk, N.Y. -- IBM announced a definitive agreement to acquire Vivisimo, a leading provider of federated discovery and navigation software that helps organizations access and analyze big data across the enterprise. Vivisimo is a privately held company based in Pittsburgh. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Washington, D.C. -- The National Retail Federation on Thursday urged the Federal Trade Commission to move cautiously in establishing regulations for mobile payments, and said any rules that are adopted should parallel those for the underlying form of payment and not be specific to the technology.

By Joel Alden, Hana Ben-Shabat, Bobby Wehmeyer and Basil Wuson, A.T. Kearney

To continuously delight customers, most retailers constantly alter product assortments, adjust prices or service offerings and refocus customer experiences. But how often are these actions based on meaningful consumer insights? When the phrase “consumer insight” is misused to refer to simple market research or interesting tidbits of information, then resulting business actions are often hit-or-miss.