Charness was speaking at the launch today of Comshare`s Arthur Enterprise Suite (AES), specifically designed to maximise Strategic Merchandise Management capabilities. "This methodology uses winning product strategies in an integrated way for creating medium- and long- range product and distribution channel plans," comments Charness. "Strategic Merchandise Management ensures that a retailer`s visions are fact-based, achievable, and likely to maximise profits. Retailers can focus all of their resources on ensuring organisational readiness for growth through such enterprise planning." The Arthur Enterprise Suite is the first application targeted at strategic merchandise management. It unites proven methodology and business practices with advanced technology to put world-class power behind world-class retailing. "Large retailers in South Africa are among the most sophisticated in the world in their use of technology," says Guy Roberts, Comshare business manager at SPL, local representatives for Comshare. "This is because they have had to overcome many unique problems, including a small, overtraded marketplace and an unstable economic environment. More recently, the credit explosion, strike action and violence have added to their challenges. Without sophisticated technology, the large retailers would not have survived." The Comshare Arthur Enterprise Suite runs on Oracle`s relational database, offering South African retailers greater scaleability and the ability to perform even more sophisticated merchandise management to reduce costs, increase stock turnover and increase profit. Arthur has evolved significantly since being a mainframe-based product - Comshare has provided PC DOS and Windows stand-alone versions, and more recently a client/server version, using an industry-leading On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) technology to serve the data "Many retailers, however, wanted an even more robust technology, and our launch of the Arthur applications suite with the Oracle relational database is the result of this demand," says Roberts. "Comshare has brought its leading retail application into line with the world`s number one database system. Arthur is now even more powerful, and gives retailers the ability to store much larger amounts of data than before." The Arthur Enterprise Suite will be of extreme interest locally, where Arthur Planning, one of the applications now included in the entire suite, is already being utilised by over 10 major retailers. Indeed, when Comshare initially launched the product 15 years ago, South Africa`s Foschini was the first customer in the world. "Arthur software is shipped retail-ready, so our specialised retail consultants can get retailers up and running within a relatively short time period," comments Roberts. "When retailers select SPL and Comshare as partners, they are assured that their software has been built with the best available technology, designed with winning methodology, supported by in-depth training, implemented by retail experts, and used by the world`s leading retailers."
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