Integrate and improve store efficiency

Now more than ever, retailers need to reduce errors at the point of sales and effectively manage their inventories. BizTalk connects to POS feeds to watch sales as they happen and provides real time messaging and alerting, giving you agile business insights.

Reduce stock-outs and increase sales and customer satisfaction

Because BizTalk Server provides you with point of sales (POS) data in real time and a real time messaging and alerting capability, you can:

• Direct your store staff to refill the shelf as soon as it’s necessary
• Manage in-store RFID implementations
• Provide real time messaging to the store staff based on their role

Lower labor costs

While inventory is a retailer's single largest expense and investment, store labor costs represent the next largest resource expense. BizTalk's Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) allows you to dynamically communicate the most appropriate task to your store associates, and notify the appropriate store team of exceptions and alerts. For instance:

• Store managers can receive advanced notification of the truck's arrival so that associates are ready for receiving and check-in
• If sales are running faster than normal in one department, additional staff can be reassigned to help out
• Staff hours can be proactively set according to task demands

"RFID is the future of retail because its a better way of counting inventory, period. Every retailer can make more money by making replenishment more efficient."

"We view BizTalk Server as our foundation for building all SOA-based applications in the future."

Simplify and improve operational efficiency

Retailers always need to find ways to reduce costs by building agile supply chains and creating new services. BizTalk provides the backbone required for the world of electronic commerce and does the heavy lifting between heterogeneous systems that allows for real business intelligence.

Improve services through connected enterprise

BizTalk broadens connectivity throughout the Retail Value Chain by connecting your stores, web and call centers to the head office. Service and employee productivity improve because of the increased availability of information.

Build agile supply chains

The world of electronic connectivity brought with it a fabulous opportunity to connect the supply chain with real time messaging, bringing high levels of efficiency and effectiveness to a retailer with a seamless flow of information across HQ, stores and suppliers. This opportunity also brought with it an abundance of communications protocols (AS2, ….) and data standards (EDI, ANSI X-12, data synch, user fields, proprietary record formats).

Use BizTalk adapters to connect your inventory, financial supply chain for banking services (e.g., credit authorization, check verification, gift card management), and service providers and transportation carriers for increased operational efficiency.

"When we saw what Microsoft was doing with its Smart Retailing Initiative, we knew that it would have good ideas about processing real-time information in a retail environment"

"With BizTalk Server deployed by HP Services we can work more flexibly. For example, with managing orders made simpler, we can move people to other areas where they can have more effect. Overall, better allocation of resources will streamline our costs and increase profitability."