Data & Analytics

Gymboree is looking to Oracle Commerce to support its full range of international e-commerce sites across all its brands, which include Gymboree, Janie and Jack, and Crazy 8.

Gymboree also plans to implement Oracle WebLogic Suite.

Brookshire Grocery plans to reduce shrink and improve in-store operations with Retail 20/20 reporting, a cloud-based exception reporting solution by Agilence.

"We needed a powerful reporting application to get the most out of our data and a team to help us drive it," stated John D'Anna, CIO for Brookshire Grocery. "After a six-month pilot, it was clear that Retail 20/20 was able to deliver a significant return on our investment."

Pharmacy benefit analytics company Truveris has named former Walgreens and Apple veteran Anthony Barrett as VP sales, central region.

Barrett joins Truveris with more than 33 years of achieving growth and leading strategic business development, sales and clinical teams. Experienced in healthcare and IT, Barrett worked at Healthways, Prime Therapeutics, Walgreens, Apple and Xerox.

ShopAdvisor, is a mobile service that reminds consumers of the things they want to buy later on, has named Peter O’Kelly as chief data officer. He will lead the company’s efforts to turn its collection of intent and affinity shopping data into offerings for media providers, marketers and retailers.

One year after Amazon Web Services launched its Redshift brand data warehousing solution, the company has upgraded the service to offer users faster data crunching capabilities at lower cost.

Irvine, Calif. -- Merchandise returns in 2013 cost U.S. retailers more than $267 billion in lost sales. That’s one of the findings contained in The Retail Equation’s 2013 Consumer Returns in the Retail Industry study, which analyzes results from the National Retail Federation’s annual survey on merchandise returns and the 2012 Canadian Retail Security Survey from The Retail Council of Canada National Retail Federation.

Omaha, Neb. - Department store retailer Gordmans has implemented Oracle Retail solutions to improve the customer experience and deliver on its advertised promise that shoppers will find “something unexpected” with each store visit. Using Oracle Retail software, Gordmans is streamlining the supply chain that supports its expansion throughout the Midwest.

In recent years, customer engagement has become much more of a mission-critical function for retailers. While nobody would argue that retailers must engage their customers in a way that recognizes the disruptive effects of leading-edge technologies like social and mobile, there is a priority that looms even larger. Namely, data security.

Insecure Data Creates Insecure Customers

Bentonville, Ark. – Wal-Mart Stores is eliminating the positions of about 2,300 Sam’s Club employees.  The job cuts represent 2% of Sam’s total workforce. Employees whose jobs are eliminated that cannot find another job with Wal-Mart or Sam’s Club will be eligible for severance.

Beloit, Wis. -- Almost one-third of U.S., consumers (30%) plan to buy a new TV in 2014 and of those, 32% said during Super Bowl sales, while 25% said during Black Friday. A new consumer survey from FatWallet also revealed price will have the most influence on TV purchases, with more than half saying they plan to spend less than $500, while one-in-four plan to spend more than $700.