Retailers focus on BI

Aberdeen surveyed over 200 retail companies during December 2007 to determine the critical BI strategies, capabilities, and technology enablers that best-in-class companies are employing to improve performance, states FOXBusiness.

The findings reveal best-in-class retailers are almost two times as likely as industry average and are 14 times as likely as Laggards to have increased their gross margin over the past year, due to their ability to derive actionable insights from their use of BI.

The top pressure motivating all respondents to focus on BI is the need to respond more rapidly to customer demand. Additionally, the top challenge that 49% of survey respondents encounter is a lack of clean data for analysis.

StoreNext Retail Technologies will offer Fujitsu Transaction Solutions' U-Scan Genesis self-checkout system to independent and regional grocers through the StoreNext national dealer network, says FOXBusiness.

"Fujitsu's U-Scan Genesis models provide a smaller footprint and greater reliability, thus helping independent grocers to improve their shopping environment and front-end workflow with less floor space," said Ray Carlin, president and CEO of StoreNext.

U-Scan Genesis also offers innovations such as two-handed scanning and lead-through lights that make transactions easier and quicker for shoppers.

Millennium Hotels and Resorts has selected Micros Systems' Micros Opera as the standard property management solution and Micros 9700 Hospitality Management System (HMS) as the standard food and beverage point-of-sale solution for its 14 Millennium Hotel properties located in the US, reports FOXBusiness.

Micros Opera will be deployed and centrally hosted in the Micros Data Centre located in Ashburn, Virginia.

Micros provides Millennium with a single solution that is PCI-certified and offers a cost-effective platform for software, IT services, deployment and support.