White Paper
Business Intelligence Unlocks the Power of Actionable Insights
Strong business intelligence has long been a key asset for retailers, but today’s
economic climate has raised the stakes. Having—and using—solid BI can mean
the difference between survival and failure. Retail executives responding to
rapid, sometimes dizzying changes have realized they need historical, current
and predictive views of their key business metrics delivered to their fingertips.
Today’s advanced BI applications must also meet the needs of an expanded user
community. Rather than the traditional “power users” distributing pre-formatted
reports, today’s BI user is seeking a “self-service”-style interface, with timely,
role-specific information and interactive capabilities, delivered on an expanding
array of devices—including mobile technology. To get the benefits of advanced BI
while dealing with today’s capital investment constraints, retailers will need to
deploy BI solutions alongside their existing applications. In addition, they will
need to determine which business processes benefit the most from real-time
information delivery.
The use of smarter BI tools will provide retailers with the
ability to find new revenue sources, identify cost-cutting opportunities, and
improve performance visibility throughout the enterprise.