Solutions on System z

Competitive pressures are moving successful retailers to a more customer centric strategy with an execution focus. Four imperatives have emerged today to propel retailers toward their vision.

First, they are developing sharply focused and distinctive brands to create a clear proposition for their customers and to distinguish themselves from their competitors.

Next, retailers are driving customer valued innovation through keener insight into the customer's wants and needs so that they can provide the right products at the right price at the right time.

Internally, retailers are optimizing core retailing activities through fact-based decision making and systematic intelligence to improve growth and improve margins.

Ultimately retailers are realigning their organizations to make customer centricity a reality. . . and to orchestrate a seamless and compelling customer experience whether it's over the internet, in the store, on the phone or through the mail.

Successful on Demand retail enterprises require business flexibility. With its unmatched ability to grow without disruption IBM System z provides a perfect platform for the on Demand retailer. IBM System z can grow incrementally and massively in either horizontal or vertical fashion. And it can do so leveraging existing resources to provide flexibility and responsiveness at lower incremental costs. Retailers will have several cost effective ways of supporting varying and seasonal workloads.

The key to being "Customer Centric" is the ability to present and leverage a common view of customer and product data to many users that are simultaneously accessing different applications both internally and externally around the clock and around the globe. Providing one consistent version of data that is constantly being updated across the retail enterprise can be extremely complicated and costly to manage. IBM's System z builds upon the inherent strengths of the IBM mainframe to deliver a highly scalable, very reliable and security-rich data serving environment enabling retailers to optimize their data assets to drive customer insight and gain competitive advantage.