IBM Unveils Advanced Analytics Portfolio To Help Retailers

IBM has announced the IBM Retail Performance Analytics (RPA), a ‘quick start’ portfolio of solutions designed to enable retailers to analyse and apply data to business processes to help them take costs out of their businesses and drive revenue.

IBM has also launched a dedicated Retail Performance Analytics Services practice with leaders in Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific. This team will focus on delivering an integrated portfolio of solutions to address the full spectrum of retailing challenges including customer loyalty, price optimisation, supply chain optimisation, vendor performance, store planning, promotion management, financial performance management and more. IBM’s new services will allow organisations to leverage data across various business processes in a meaningful way.

The new comprehensive approach, which addresses the continuum of customer, merchandising, supply chain, financial, and total store analytics, will help retailers co-ordinate planning and measurement across the chain so they can grow revenue, increase market share and forge better connections with customers.

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By giving retailers a single-view of critical customer, financial product, vendor data and more, retailers will be better positioned to respond to changing customer and business needs. RPA combines the IBM Cognos portfolio of business intelligence and performance management software with industry consulting and systems integration expertise. Retailers can access valuable accelerators and tools that enable retail-specific data modeling, business performance analysis, what-if forecasting, and key performance indicators (KPI) metrics management.

In today’s store environments, retailers are focused on driving operational efficiencies and cutting costs while vying for loyal customers, who will be ‘Advocates’ for their brand. IBM’s new RPA solution is designed to deliver data on customised customer preferences so that retailers better ‘know their customer’.

“The current economic environment is driving the growth and demand of effective business intelligence and performance management solutions,” said Fred Balboni, Global Retail Industry leader and partner, IBM Global Business Services. “Retailers who leverage the current situation to advance their analytical capabilities will not only weather the current crisis better but they will also be positioned for a strong competitive advantage in the future”.

Evolution of Retail Business Intelligence

IBM’s Retail Performance Analytics is a quick-start portfolio solution that addresses complex information-based business problems across the enterprise. It combines hardware, infrastructure, software and services to help retailers plan, manage, and optimise their businesses.

The new Retail Performance Analytics portfolio contains the following features:

* Accelerators and templates give retailers a head start in performance management – in as little as 90-120 days – so retailers can better forecast demand and assortments based on product flow, movement and demographic make-up of the surrounding market
* Store management access to key performance metrics that can head off business issues, such as out of stock, before end of day
* Easy to use toolsets that encourage multidimensional analysis for more targeted promotions
* Dashboards that provide a platform of ease-of-use across the enterprise from all channels and devices
* Ability to provide information to merchants, executives, store associates and vendors in real time