Retail Industry

[admin]

Global retailers and manufacturers unite

Inside Retailing June 19, 2009 08:42

Global food and non food consumer goods retailers and manufacturers have voted to join forces in a new global, joint trade and industry body.

Named The Consumer Goods Forum, members have combined sales of EUR 2.1 trillion.

The new association unites not only the world’s leading consumer goods retailers and manufacturers, but also many regional specialists and independents. It has a mandate from its members to develop common positions on key strategic and practical issues affecting the consumer goods industry, to focus on non-competitive collaborative process improvement and to provide a network for thought leadership and knowledge exchange.

The organisation will be co-chaired by retailer Pierre-Olivier Beckers, president and CEO, Delhaize Group and by manufacturer AG Lafley, CEO, president and chairman, Procter & Gamble.

The forum was created by the merger of CIES, the pre-eminent food and consumer goods industry body, with the Global CEO Forum and the Global Commerce Initiative, two global retailer and manufacturer collaborative platforms.

The Consumer Goods Forum , will be governed on a parity basis, and will have an equal number of manufacturers and retailers on its board of directors – see attached. The new forum will be headquartered in Paris.

Beckers, former chairman of CIES, said: “The global consumer goods industry is facing multiple challenges. We must address issues of environmental, social and food supply sustainability. We must continue to deliver affordable, safe food and useful, exciting products to consumers in an uncertain economic climate. We will continue to prioritise our industry-leading initiatives on food safety and social responsibility. We will continue to provide thought leadership and cutting edge business intelligence. But we will do so with a united focus.”

Lafley said: “This new industry body will allow us to address non-competitive issues together more effectively than ever by giving an equal voice to all sides. It represents a radical change in the way we as trading partners are equipped to meet the demands of the global supply chain and is a true global network for serving shopper and consumer needs.”

[admin]

Global retailers and manufacturers unite

Inside Retailing June 19, 2009 08:42

Global food and non food consumer goods retailers and manufacturers have voted to join forces in a new global, joint trade and industry body.

Named The Consumer Goods Forum, members have combined sales of EUR 2.1 trillion.

The new association unites not only the world’s leading consumer goods retailers and manufacturers, but also many regional specialists and independents. It has a mandate from its members to develop common positions on key strategic and practical issues affecting the consumer goods industry, to focus on non-competitive collaborative process improvement and to provide a network for thought leadership and knowledge exchange.

The organisation will be co-chaired by retailer Pierre-Olivier Beckers, president and CEO, Delhaize Group and by manufacturer AG Lafley, CEO, president and chairman, Procter & Gamble.

The forum was created by the merger of CIES, the pre-eminent food and consumer goods industry body, with the Global CEO Forum and the Global Commerce Initiative, two global retailer and manufacturer collaborative platforms.

The Consumer Goods Forum , will be governed on a parity basis, and will have an equal number of manufacturers and retailers on its board of directors – see attached. The new forum will be headquartered in Paris.

Beckers, former chairman of CIES, said: “The global consumer goods industry is facing multiple challenges. We must address issues of environmental, social and food supply sustainability. We must continue to deliver affordable, safe food and useful, exciting products to consumers in an uncertain economic climate. We will continue to prioritise our industry-leading initiatives on food safety and social responsibility. We will continue to provide thought leadership and cutting edge business intelligence. But we will do so with a united focus.”

Lafley said: “This new industry body will allow us to address non-competitive issues together more effectively than ever by giving an equal voice to all sides. It represents a radical change in the way we as trading partners are equipped to meet the demands of the global supply chain and is a true global network for serving shopper and consumer needs.”

[BI Tragic]

Can somebody explain what 'three data halls' are??!

Woolies splurges on $50m datacentre

Renai LeMay, ZDNet.com.au 11 June 2009 02:59 PM

Retail giant Woolworths has contracted Watpac Construction to build a $50 million new datacentre facility in Sydney's Eastern Creek district.

In a statement, Watpac said the building would house three data halls and associated offices, for a total space of 14,000 square metres. Work will commence by the end of June, with the project scheduled to be completed in late 2010.

"This project will generate up to 250 jobs on site and a further 100 jobs off site," said Watpac managing director Greg Kempton. Watpac is also currently completing work on the 8 Central Avenue complex in the Australia Technology Park area in Sydney.

[Doug Heywood]

Online retailer doubles its revenue with SAP

24 Jun 2009
by: Nathan Dukes

SAP announced today that with the help of SAP® Business All-in-One software, online retailer Layby Services Australia has doubled its revenue and cut manual processes by 95%.

Layby worked with SAP and partner Lodestone to implement the solution, which incorporated Customer Resource Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Business Intelligence (BI) software to support the growth of the business.

Layby CFO, Toby Poulson, said they were hindered by an outdated computer system which could not process orders quickly, slowing overall business.

“For our business, the biggest limit to growth was technology,” Mr Poulson said.

“The functionality that SAP Software provided had to be largely automated and linked, so minimal manual intervention was required. Automation was in fact a key requirement for the project,” he said.

The solution allows the 40 call centre representatives to easily manage customer orders and payments. Layby now connects directly to its bank, allowing payments to be cleared daily without manual work.

The system also allows customers to easily change their payment method and payment schedule.

To minimise disruption to Layby’s operations, SAP and Lodestone only gave themselves 13 weeks to implement the new system.

All 40,000 customers, 120,000 prospects and leads, 2,000 materials and over 60,000 sales orders had to be transferred in that time.

Overall, Mr Poulson was satisfied with the efficiency with which SAP and Lodestone were able to install the software.

“Achieving this timeframe was remarkable and we enjoyed a very smooth transition. I have 12 years experience in using and implementing SAP and have never known a project to be so short and so smooth,” Mr Poulson said.

Layby also identified SAP’s BI solution as another way to optimise overall efficiency.
The solution has enabled them to access daily web based financial scorecards of every transaction, giving them the ability to react quickly to anomalies.

“This new BI solution and reporting system has provided Layby with a key competitive advantage. Ultimately, we are keeping our finger on the pulse and achieving the best return on our marketing investment. With this, we know how to develop future campaigns and scorecards,” said Poulson.

Layby Services Australia owns and operates Hamper King, an online hamper retailer.

[admin]

Originally Posted by BI Tragic

Can somebody explain what 'three data halls' are??!

No idea really, but is it simply 4 rows of racks or 3 rooms!

[Steve Bennett]

7-Eleven rolls out ANZ bank EFT system
Suzanne Tindal, ZDNet.com.au
17 July 2009 04:00 PM

The Australian 7-Eleven convenience chain is looking to Australia and New Zealand Banking Group for a new electronic funds transfer (EFT) system for its 386 stores, replacing its previous in-house system.

"We were going to have to do some significant upgrades to the current solution to make it compliant with all of the new demands of the card issuers in terms of security and encryption and all of those things," 7-Eleven CIO Dennis Lewis told ZDNet.com.au. It made more sense to replace it with an up-to-date system, he said.

Although the new system would in part be funded via merchant fees, there was still some capital investment on the system, Lewis said. He thought it was worth it. "It's something that takes us forward rather than shoring up an old solution," he said.

The business case for developing an EFT system in-house had been badly damaged by rules made by the Reserve Bank on interchange fees since 7-Eleven developed its system seven years ago, Lewis said. "The banks used to pay us quite high fees for EFT transactions. The changes in all the rules reduced our income quite significantly," he said.

Lewis' 19-strong IT team was currently testing the new system. He hoped to see it rolled out to the stores by this Christmas. He would not comment on the cost of the system.

"The changes in all the rules reduced our income quite significantly"
Dennis Lewis

This project hasn't been the only iron in Lewis' fire. Last year he completed an SAP upgrade that was the basis for 7-Eleven's SAP business intelligence implementation, phase one of which went live in December.

Although it was too early yet to really see the benefits, he said that some advantages of the new system were already flowing through. "They're able now to really monitor what's happening at a store level in terms of inventory," he said.

It was used extensively in supply negotiations. "Having access to really good information that we can get quickly kind of changes a bit of the negotiations with our suppliers, because we've probably got better information than they have, which previously we didn't," he said.

A bevy of manual reporting was also being automated, to save staff time.

Phase two is to move the use of the system to the stores, not just the head office. Lewis was deciding what information the stores could use without running the danger of becoming lost under an avalanche of data. "Technically we have all the capability in place, it's just really a question of what do we want to give them," he said.

Another key project has been what he calls eServices, carried out with a company called Touch Networks. The project revolves around creating the capability to sell lottery tickets or transport cards using the chain's Radiant point of sale system instead of through a separate kiosk run by the ticket seller in the 7-Eleven store.

"It makes life a hell of a lot easier at the store level"
Dennis Lewis

"Developing the capability and integrating it into our system was massive," Lewis said. "It was at the application level: how do you integrate something so that our touchscreen point of sale can interact with a piece of software that then goes back over the network and interacts with somebody else's back-end database, creates a transaction and hands it back over to the point of sale so you can sell it to the customer."

The idea was to get really good integration at a generic level so that Lewis' team didn't have to keep changing the point of sale software.

Getting rid of kiosks not only frees up real estate on the store counters, but also means that the stores don't have to reconcile revenues from two different systems. "It makes life a hell of a lot easier at the store level," he said.

Lewis is also looking at being able to link other kiosks into the new system. These kiosks would be away from the front counter and would allow customers to access self-serve products, which require too much data entry to be done at the counter, such as e-tag top ups that require more detailed personal information.

[Steve Bennett]

Kathmandu chooses Intranet DASHBOARD over SharePoint in "no brainer"

iD proves most cost-effective intranet solution
Melbourne, Australia – Outdoor clothing retailer Kathmandu has implemented Intranet DASHBOARD (iD) across its 80 stores in Australia, New Zealand and the UK to improve internal communications through more timely and efficient information sharing.
Kathmandu selected the iD communications platform over SharePoint, after discovering it offered most the features it needed straight out of the box, for a fraction of the price.

Bryan Moore, General Manager of Information Systems at Kathmandu, commented: “We discovered iD on the internet and lined it up against SharePoint to find it offered significantly more value for money. It was also much less complex making our decision a no-brainer.”

Following Kathmandu’s sale three years ago, internal communications was identified as a key issue for the business. The company was primarily using phone and fax to communicate with its remote staff, which was proving difficult and at times ineffective. It wanted to be able to deliver simple, consistent management communications to its retailers.

“The intranet lets us channel information to our stores through the one gateway and governs the style and timing of our communications,” Moore said.

“It provides a huge opportunity for us to engage with the sales force. Ultimately, we wanted to make sure that everyone is on the same page and aware of promotions, events and related activities. iD gives us one version of the truth.”

The new intranet is also operating as a business intelligence tool by enabling it to gather more feedback and data from its 80 stores. “iD has tools inbuilt that allow us to take timely feedback from our sales force and provide a holistic view of business activity.”

Phase 1 of the iD rollout has gone live with a second phase to follow in a few months time, which will see further functionality introduced into the Kathmandu intranet.

Staff feedback to date has been very positive, with an initial survey revealing 60 per cent of employees rate the new intranet as fantastic.

Connie Pandos, co-founder and director of Intranet DASHBOARD, said customers were increasingly selecting iD over SharePoint because they find SharePoint to be too expensive and complex.

“iD is quickly developing a reputation as the affordable SharePoint alternative among our customers. Our latest version of the software – iD 3.0 – provides a fully featured, cost effective alternative when your company can’t entertain a couple of hundred thousand dollars for an intranet, extranet or portal solution, which is welcomed news when budgets are under pressure.”

Intranet DASHBOARD has helped over 800 organisations worldwide streamline their business processes and improve internal communications including Jetstar, Shell, Audi, SEEK and Panasonic. For further information visit Intranet DASHBOARD : Home - Award Winning Intranet & Extranet Software. Intranet, Extranet & Portal Software, Knowledge Management Solution & System, Enterprise Portal, Web Applications.

-ends-

Media enquiries:

Carla Carafa and Sarah Stokely
Keep Left PR on behalf of Intranet DASHBOARD
Tel: +61 3 9510 3910 Mob: +61 413 106 506 (Carla) / +61 403 800 991 (Sarah)
Email: carla@keepleftpr.com.au / sarah@keepleftpr.com.au

About Intranet DASHBOARD

Intranet DASHBOARD (iD) delivers an all in one, pain free approach towards building and managing your intranet, extranet or portal. iD satisfies the needs of management, IT, and the rest of the business, with an extensive suite of powerful tools and applications ready to go, out of the box. iD takes ease of use to the next level, with wizard based processes and drag and drop functionality ensuring all users will embrace iD, regardless of their technical nous. iD has helped over 800 clients worldwide including Shell International, Audi, Adidas, Jetstar, Panasonic and Fox Sports streamline their business processes and improve communication.

About Kathmandu

Kathmandu has 45 stores Australia, 31 in New Zealand and six in the UK.

[Doug Heywood]

I just read this online:

Consumers’ ability to track orders gives them a sense of control
27 Jul 2009 USA Today

“Data is money,” says Patricia Martin, author of Renaissance Generation: The Rise of the Cultural Consumer and What It Means to Your Business. “The more information you have, the more interesting you are.”

Tracking addict: Tracy May, a 33-year-old full-time mom in Lombard, Ill., started tracking the habits of her 8-month-old daughter, Abby, days after she was born, at the Trixie Tracker website.

That’s why Domino’s rolled out Pizza Tracker last year. It’s why UPS and FedEx will send constant updates to consumers who want to know the whereabouts of their packages. Website FlightAware lets folks track the status of virtually any domestic flight. The Chicago Transit Authority Bus Tracker online system lets commuters track the whereabouts of their buses. New York City has Stimulus Tracker, which lets folks track where its stimulus funds are being spent. There’s even a website that helps parents track — from a distance — their infant’s sleeping, eating and, yes, pooping patterns.

In the end, this national obsession with tracking may be about consumers wanting some sense — real or perceived — of control. “I’d much rather know if I’m secure in my job,” says Barry Glassner, sociology professor at University of Southern California. “But if I can’t know that, at least I can know the status of my pizza.”

The relentless consumer need to track is really about how valuable our time has become, says Grant McCracken, a cultural anthropologist. But, he warns, 24/7 tracking “fits us with a harness that some may resent. Someone is obliged to feed us perfect information and delivery time, and we’re obliged to do the same.”

McCracken admits to being a track-a-holic. After recently ordering a Lenovo ThinkPad from overseas, he closely tracked — via a UPS site — the route that his computer took from China to Hong Kong to Alaska to Memphis to his home in Connecticut. Sure, he was eager to get the new computer, which he was going to use to plan a new project, but equally important: “It was fun to watch it move through virtual space.”
For Domino’s, the tracker is more than a marketing tool. Even as it gives consumers a window into the status of their pizzas, it gives Domino’s a window into the online world of its customers.

“Americans love knowing where their things are,” says Chris McGlothlin, chief information office at Domino’s. Folks constantly tell Domino’s how much they hate not knowing when — or if — their pizza will arrive. The Pizza Tracker, used by 75% of Domino’s online customers, is an attempt to solve that problem. While current technology also could track the whereabouts of drivers, Domino’s won’t track that for security reasons.

Besides connecting consumers to their pizzas, the tracker gives the first names of workers who make and deliver their order, says Russell Weiner, chief marketing officer. As a society, “We’re not just time-starved, we’re starved for connections to others.”

Among the things we devote huge chunks of time tracking:
Our stuff. Tracking is a core function for FedEx. Its site, FedEx.com, gets 6 million package-tracking requests daily, says Mark Colombo, senior vice president of digital access marketing.

“Tracking is one of our top drivers for customer satisfaction,” Colombo says. “People are obsessed with it.”
Also, pay for many of the 100 top executives at FedEx is directly measured against the company’s success in delivering packages on time.

The only way to measure that is, of course, to track it.

So it should be no surprise that FedEx has 14 tracking “events” for the average package, from pickup to when it gets on the plane to when it’s on a local truck to delivery.

Consumers can choose to be notified of any of these handoffs. But the one requested most often — to follow the driver who brings the package to their home — they’re not allowed to see.

“They’d love to watch the exact truck or plane that’s carrying their package,” Colombo says. While FedEx has the technology to do that, it won’t take the step for security reasons, he says.
Over at rival UPS, tracking also is relentless. It keeps track of each time a package is touched by a handler — and offers that data to curious customers.

It handles about 23 million tracking requests a day at UPS.com for the 15 million packages it delivers each day, says Dave Barnes, chief information officer. In other words, the average package is tracked about 1½ times.

The fastest-growing part of tracking at UPS is mobile tracking via smartphones, Barnes says. BlackBerry owners can receive email updates on packages.

In Europe, UPS lets customers download widgets to their desktops so they can track packages without even going to the UPS website. That easy ability to track is coming to the U.S., too, though Barnes doesn’t know when.

Our flights. Some folks are big trackers of flights. That’s why Daniel Baker started FlightAware in 2005. It’s a free service that receives FAA information and converts it into maps that track almost all non-military flights in the USA and Canada. That’s about 50,000 flights a day.

The service receives 100 million flight-tracking requests a month, CEO Baker says.

Spouses often use it to track the status of flights of their husbands or wives. Some folks use it to track packages. “But there are tons of people who are just tracking to track,” says Baker. He says that’s about 20% of his site’s business.
Our buses.

Last year, the Chicago Transit Authority began to roll out a Bus Tracker that lets riders go online and track what time their bus will arrive.

The CTA’s slogan for the new service: “The wait is over.”

Well, not always. The site, www.ctabustracker.com, which is refreshed every few minutes, gives estimated arrival time based on traffic, scheduling and GPS systems on most of the city’s 2,000 buses. Sometimes it’s a bit off, but more often, it’s on target, says Noelle Gaffney, a spokeswoman for CTA.
The site is averaging 27,600 visitors a day. It’s just rolling out a new service: bus information via text messages on cellphones. Folks who text the numbers of a bus and bus stop will get back the approximate arrival time.

“This takes uncertainty out of the equation,” Gaffney says. “Just knowing that your bus is coming in 15 minutes gives you a sense of control.”

Our spending.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who made millions tracking data, is giving New Yorkers the chance to track city agency performance at CPR: Agency Reports. The website includes 550 data points that residents can track — from the response time of the local fire department to how quickly potholes are filled.

It also now is tracking spending of the $5 billion in federal stimulus money the city is receiving, at NYC Stimulus Tracker.

Folks can track everything from the $47.2 million allocated for a Brooklyn Bridge rehab project to the $290,000 being spent on elevator repair at BedfordStuyvesant public housing.

“People are surprised this data exists,” says Jeffrey Kay, director of operations for the mayor. “Data adds transparency, and transparency is good in government.”

Our kids. Web designer Ben MacNeill became a stay-at-home dad after his daughter, Trixie, was born six years ago. To help his working wife, Jennifer Egan, keep tabs on their daughter, he began to chart Trixie’s daily diaperings, feedings and sleep patterns, which at first seemed random.

“ I discovered immediate trends after five days,” MacNeill says. He figured most sleep-deprived parents weren’t much good at calculating trends with their newborns. So he developed software that converts daily input into formatted charts, which his wife, a pathologist, could view at any time from work.

Then he started charging others $8 a month for the real-time service at his website, Trixie Tracker (trixietracker.com). He’s attracted about 7,000 customers.

One is Tracy May, a 33-year-old full-time mom from Lombard, Ill., who started tracking the habits of her 8-month-old daughter, Abby, days after she was born.

Abby wasn’t a great eater or sleeper. So May tracked her habits “for my own peace of mind.” Now, she says, “I’ve become addicted to tracking her. My friends think it’s a little excessive.”

May says she became a compulsive tracker at the non-profit she formerly worked for, where everything is results-oriented.
If nothing else, she says, tracking Abby’s sleep, feedings and diaper changes has accomplished one very important thing. “It keeps me off of Facebook.”

[Steve Bennett]

by Peter Dinham
ITWire, Tuesday, 25 August 2009

Office products and solutions retailer, Officeworks, is looking to get a better handle on how to engage and communicate with its customers and further build its online and offline business with its contracting of business intelligence provider, Site Intelligence, to deliver a customer analytics and BI system.


Officeworks online manager, Matt Jefferies, said today the selection of Site Intelligence to provide online and multi-channel customer intelligence, was part of Officeworks’ increased focus on the multi-channel arena which he said was designed to build on the retailer’s successful online business and thriving offline business.

According to Site Intelligence Australia APAC director, David Smith, the deployment of its BI system will enable Officeworks to pull together all of its online and offline customer activity data in order to “better understand their customers and provide a more personalised and streamlined service, better communication, as well as providing more personalised and tailored product offers and content.”

Smith says the system won’t just focus on measuring campaign success but will provide a single view of the customer and their likely interests at product level, enabling Officeworks to better understand how individual customers wish to engage and communicate with the business, including browsing and researching online and purchasing online or in-store.

Officeworks’ Matt Jefferies says Site Intelligence will enable the company to have “a clear and concise view of our site, visitors, products and campaigns, highlighting areas that need attention in order to improve customer experience and identifying potential opportunities.”

According to David Smith, the main point of difference with the Site Intelligence system is its ability to provide “in-depth detail down to every click of every visit, by each individual visitor online and then marry this up against other individual customer offline data such as in-store sales.

“This will provide Officeworks with a 360 degree view of their customers’ and prospects’ browsing and enable them to identify areas that require fine-tuning, or opportunities to better meet customer needs. This can prove invaluable in terms of knowing their customer and being able to tailor an offering or service to them in order to improve customer satisfaction, which of course will hopefully result in increased sales, conversion and retention rates.”

[Steve Bennett]

by Beverley Head
iTWire, Tuesday, 25 August 2009

Australian retailers are starting to push CRM and business intelligence tools out to the coalface, providing store managers with unprecedented levels of information about both their customers and the store’s performance.

Both Super Cheap Auto Group and Gloria Jean’s Coffees are exploring how to make more information available to their in-store managers over the next 12 months. According to Dr Bruce McCabe, director of technology innovation at KPMG; “When you push it out to the coalface you can set up feedback loops,” which he explained “combine human intelligence and silicon and improve both through an iterative process.”
“One of the great opportunities in business intelligence is to increase the footprint and make intelligence available to the people who can act on it, not just the (executive) managers,” he said.

Karin Hattingh is the divisional controller for Gloria Jean’s Coffees in Australia which is installing IBM Cognos TM1 to provide enhanced reporting for the business. “One of the aims for the future is to do franchise partner analysis and benchmarking,” according to Hattingh, who hopes to have a system ready by Christmas.

“If they know that other franchisees are returning 18 per cent profit, compared with their 10 per cent,” she said, store managers may be in a position to, for example, tackle their costs of goods. Analysis may show their wastage or salary costs are higher than comparable outlets allowing store managers to make changes to improve performance.

“When you drill down to that level you might find that some of the franchise partners never use casuals for more than 20 hours a week, and if you pay less than $400 a week then you don’t have to make superannuation contributions.” Having more granular store level information would allow franchise partners to more effectively manage their businesses.

Super Cheap Auto Group owns a series of brands in Australia, running a total of about 350 stores. In 2002 the company decided to embrace SAP tools for enterprise management and is now implementing CRM Professional and Campaign Management. Although the initial focus has been producing reports for executives, CIO Wayne McMahon said that the group was this year looking at how to make more information available at the store level.

“They could know if they (customers) have got a (loyalty) club membership, their demographic, age, and what products people buy. For example in a Goldcross Cycles (store) if it’s a first bicycle then they are likely to want to buy a kit as well.”
McMahon explained; “In our business it’s about enabling decision makers,” and that the “longer term vision is about potentially rolling reports into stores.”

But having access to information just for the sake of it won’t benefit anyone – the type of information provided, and the amount needs to be carefully thought through. As Dr McCabe notes; “An individual in a Super Cheap might be disconcerted if they were greeted by name. But managers could use the system to suggest the McDonald’s upsell. If they buy a socket set, they might want a ratchet as well.

“There are lots of little things you can do when you push that intelligence to the store level.”