Business intelligence for retail from IBM

The goal

Improve analysis with enterprise-wide data access

How do buying trends compare across geographies? What effect does a price change have on sales of a new product? Is your latest promotion working well? The IBM Retail Business Intelligence Solution is designed to provide enterprise-wide, integrated access to POS data, historical buying data, pricing data, promotion results, customer data, vendor scorecards—so you can produce more detailed reports for better analysis.

The advantage

Rely on our data management and retail experience

IBM is a leader in information management solutions, and we have a strong history of helping retailers implement technology to improve operations.

• The modeling for IBM Retail Business Intelligence Solution was done in IBM's industry leading IFW Lab in Dublin, which has over ten years of experience creating, improving and supporting data models for specific industries.
• IBM intends to provide ongoing enhancements to the models to reflect business, technical and regulatory trends in the retail marketplace.

The benefits

Benefit across all areas of your business

The Retail Business Intelligence Solution provides an enterprise view of data, which can affect all areas of your retail business.

Marketing and customer management

• Build more successful, targeted promotions based on customer segmentation and purchasing patterns in specific locations.
• Enhance new product introductions by understanding purchasing trends and better forecasting how different markets and customer segments will respond.
• Provide consistent, multi-channel service to customers by enabling all customer touch points to access the same, up-to-date information about each customer.

Store operations

• Streamline the store ordering process and speed the flow of goods to stores by using inventory and sales information to determine when to replenish merchandise.
• Develop more effective product assortment plans based on individual store demographics and market trends—put the right products in the right stores at the right time.
• Improve customer service and satisfaction by speeding checkout processing times and reducing out-of-stocks and backorders.

Merchandise planning

• Improve inventory analysis to manage inventory levels for maximum productivity and help ensure promotional inventory levels are forecasted and met.
• Formulate accurate allocation models for new stores and replenishment at existing locations.
• Evaluate vendor performance to maintain item quality and help ensure items are received in a timely manner.

The approach

Improve promotion analysis with enterprise-wide data

A store manager analyzes his specific store data for a back-to-school promotion currently in progress. He compares his store with another nearby store, and asks the lead merchandiser for the promotion for recommendations on improving his store's performance. The merchandiser is able to analyze data from all stores, reviewing demographics data for the manager's store versus other stores. Based on this analysis, she recommends new signage that will cater to the store's increasing Hispanic population. She contacts her supply analyst, who also uses the data warehouse to locate the necessary signage, which he ships out to the store manager.

Although they are not in the same location, the store manager, merchandiser and supply analyst have access to enterprise-wide data to support one another and improve the results of the promotion.

The financial advantage

Make operational changes for a return on investment

The IBM Retail Business Intelligence Solution provides you with access to the data you need to make operational changes that can help increase revenue and have a positive impact on your bottom-line. We can help you:

• Set reasonable and attainable corporate targets for sales, gross, net and pretax profit.
• Increase operational efficiency by performing better analysis on staffing, in-store production management, sales, losses, location and general characteristics of the stores.
• Establish more effective pricing strategies by seeing how pricing changes affect sales on a per store basis.

Next steps

Questions about this solution? Contact an IBM retail specialist.