The Strategic Tool, a Durban-based software development company, has become the fastest growing new force in the retail market with its Predictor application.
With its roots in mainframe-based back-end systems written over more than a decade at Specialty Stores, and developed in Unisyse-@ction Business Information Server (formerly known as MAPPER) environment, Predictor has been implemented in 81 stores in the first year of sales activity.
Now, running R250 million worth of annual sales in the Durban area, the Strategic Tool has turned its attention to Johannesburg, where it has won its first contracts against a number of leading market incumbents.
Predictor was developed under the direction of Gordon Hume, MD of The Strategic Tool and former Specialty IT director, who applied his understanding of retail technology gained over a 15-year period at Specialty to develop a PC-based application that would address many of the shortcomings customers were experiencing in the market.
It took two programmers just two years to deliver Predictor in MAPPER and Delphi. It embodies much of the functionality to be found in a high-end system such as that of the JSE Securities Exchange-listed Specialty Group.
The keys to the success of Predictor have been its analysis capabilities, low cost of acquisition and ownership and high performance, driven largely through the integrated MAPPER flatfile database and fourth-generation language, says Strategic Tool MD Gordon Hume.
"Our approach to creating a new retail system was simple," says Hume. "We know that retailers` margins are under pressure and they don`t necessarily want a long-term involvement with their suppliers. We designed a system that would gather data at point of sale, work first time and require no support, and for which we would therefore charge no maintenance.
"We came up with a system that is sold, rather than licensed, to customers; that maximises the power of off-the-shelf PCs, with just one PC per store; that is bug-free; and that allows our customers to perform in-depth business analytics, giving a detailed overview of the performance of their business, from stockholding and ordering to analysis of individual store."
Durban chain store Ideals, which has been in business for more than a century, attests to the power of Predictor. Ideals MD AK Jadwat comments: "The company would never have survived the last 12-15 months of complete deterioration of sales in the clothing market if we did not have Predictor."
The complexity and performance overhead of relational databases means data must typically be summarised and aggregated for management to gain a meaningful insight without performance impact. This is costly and prevents access to transaction-level data, adds Hume.
"Business Information Server`s capabilities allow Predictor to load up to 60 000 records a second; this performance, married to today`s powerful PCs, obviates the need for intermediate systems and allows us to view data from any angle, at any depth. This is reporting in line with what retailers expect," notes Hume.
With depth of feature and functionality subsumed, the Strategic Tool can draw on its decades of retail experience to assist its clients with business improvement projects which could help them pull through one of the most testing periods in retail history.
"In many respects we are seeing the rebirth of the flatfile as a viable alternative to relational database," says Mike Edmunds, regional sales director for Unisys Africa in Durban. "Relational databases have gained popularity because of their power and functionality, but in many cases they are overkill for what is actually needed in corporate applications.
"The Business Information Server is an enterprise decision support system providing information access, analysis, and reporting in an open client/server environment. It is designed for end-user ad hoc analysis and the rapid development of decision support applications. Simply put, the Business Information Server transforms data into information," comments Edmunds.
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