Real-time analytics for the retail industry
Increase business performance and customer satisfaction by connecting information, process, systems, and people
In a retail organization, managers and supervisors are constantly juggling multiple activities that need to be continuously monitored and adjusted to increase efficiency, improve customer service and increase sales. Such "juggling acts" are repeated on a larger scale throughout the retail enterprise. That's why providing easier access to appropriate, accurate, and timely information, allowing people throughout their organization to make faster, more-informed decisions, is a business imperative in retail.
Microsoft and its partners can help you to meet this need by providing a complete end-to-end environment for real-time analytics, focused on gaining business insight, monitoring business activities, and sharing information collaboratively across the organization. Microsoft and its partner solutions make extensive use of tools and technologies that are not only available today but are often deployed throughout the company. Retailers gain the opportunity to extend this collaborative infrastructure from their head office to their stores, taking advantage of their entire technology investment and lowering lifecycle costs.
On This Page
Benefits
Business intelligence and collaborative solutions making use of real-time analytics solutions from Microsoft and its partners offer the following benefits:
| • | Make faster, more-informed decisions for better overall performance of the organization by integrating and analyzing information from a variety of sources, including a current data warehouse, store transactional information, legacy applications, enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and external sources. |
| • | Improve business processes in areas such as real-time fraud detection, out-of-stock monitoring, equipment maintenance, task management, and optimized processes for cash register and store openings through enhanced integration, analysis, and reporting capabilities. |
| • | Use sophisticated analytics to help with price, merchandise, and promotion optimization. For example, retailers can customize the merchandise offer to the profile of a store or channel; maximize sales at full margin when there is the demand; and react quickly to reduce slow-moving stock to make way for new lines. |
| • | More easily share accurate product information, with improved communication and interaction with customers, employees, headquarters, and suppliers. |
| • | Enhance customer service levels by supplying employees with product information; the ability to address out-of-stocks; and the ability to handle complaints in real time, through handheld devices for use on the store floor. |
| • | Enable suppliers to more easily access appropriate, predetermined information that can help speed replenishment and anticipate stock-outs. This type of collaboration could include sharing sales data, forecasts, and production information, as well as exchanges of documents such as purchase orders, Advance Shipment Notifications (ASNs), invoices, and credit notes. |
Case studies
Read these studies to learn how other retailers have benefited from business intelligence solutions from Microsoft and its partners.
Technologies
Microsoft technologies provide an infrastructure for real-time Analytics that support business process improvement in the store, at corporate headquarters, and throughout the supply chain.
Microsoft Business Intelligence, a complete suite of server, client, and developer products, is an integral part of these solutions, supporting all facets of decision-making.
Microsoft products
The end-to-end environment for real-time analytics includes:
| • | Microsoft BizTalk Server integrates and transfers information through the various systems in the retail organization, enabling automation and optimization of business processes. |
| • | Microsoft SQL Server collects and manages information in combination with BizTalk Server, providing a robust, scalable enterprise platform equipped with an enhanced set of real-time data collection, analysis, forecasting and reporting tools. |
| • | SQL Server Integration Services enables users to integrate and analyze data across a wide range of sources, including operational systems, data warehouses, and Web services. |
| • | Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server, the front-end interface portal, and Microsoft Office Performance Server 2007, give store managers an overview of performance across their departments. SharePoint Portal Server can deliver reliable, real-time information at the right time to the right person, facilitating collaboration throughout the organization and with suppliers spread out over multiple locations. |
| • | Microsoft Windows Server System is a basic component of better communication and collaboration capabilities, and may already be supporting many retail systems. Retailers can use the same infrastructure used at the head office and throughout the enterprise to further enhance collaboration. |
| • | Microsoft Active Directory stores and manages user information and roles, offering an integrated, distributed directory service that enables a single sign-on for users. |
| • | Microsoft Office Live Communications Server provides robust, scalable, enterprise-grade instant messaging as well as peer-to-peer audio and videoconferencing, extending real-time communication to partners, customers, and suppliers. |
Partners
Explore the following partners to fine one using Microsoft technology to provide real-time analytics solutions:
Acorn Systems
Acorn Systems provides continuous enterprise-wide visibility into business performance, enabling profit improvement at a low total cost of ownership. Acorn Systems delivers a solution that is verifiably accurate, auditable, and actionable. Acorn Systems' solution is flexible and dynamic and provides a sustainable, scalable platform for corporate performance management.
Epicor|CRS
Epicor|CRS—the Retail Solutions Division of Epicor Software Corporation—provides retail management software, hardware, and services to help its customers drive sales, improve customer service, and reduce operating costs, all with more ease and flexibility.
JDA Software
JDA Software Group, Inc., is the global leader in helping more than 5,500 retail, manufacturing, and wholesale-distribution customers in 60 countries realize real demand-chain results. JDA commits significant resources to advancing the JDA Portfolio suite of vertically-focused supply and demand-chain solutions.
Panorama Software
Panorama Software enables global organizations that run their companies using SAP and Microsoft technologies to rapidly identify trends, maximize business opportunities, and improve corporate performance and results through enterprise business intelligence and performance management solutions.
SourceCode Technology Holdings
SourceCode Technology Holdings, Inc., develops the award-winning K2.net 2003 enterprise workflow offering. K2.net 2003 is the leader in business process management for .NET through its enablement of rapid solution assembly to optimize interactions between people, systems, and process.
Sysrepublic
Sysrepublic specializes in the provision of software products and consultancy services to the retail sector, and are industry pioneers in the use of Microsoft technologies for the implementation of "Real Time Retailing." The Sysrepublic Real Time Retail infrastructure allows retailers faster access to critical business information, with increased detail and greater accuracy.
Wincor Nixdorf
Wincor Nixdorf is one of the world's leading providers of information technology (IT) solutions to the retail and banking industries. The company's extensive portfolio, consisting of hardware, software, consulting services, system maintenance, and other services, is aimed at businesses with extensive branch networks, to optimize costs, reduce complexity, and improve service to the end customer.
Next steps
