BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - December 9, 2008) - Aberdeen, a Harte-Hanks Company (
NYSE:
HHS),
recently released published a new research report entitled, "Increasing
Retail Productivity: Enterprise-Wide Business Intelligence" which outlined
the findings of 150 retail enterprises that were surveyed between October -
November 2008 to determine the opportunities and pitfalls of an
enterprise-wide BI or transactional intelligence strategy in retail. The
research indicates that while retailers are currently using BI in silo
formats within customer management, merchandising, and store operations,
the roadmap for BI is gradually leading towards enterprise-wide adoption.
Of the BI functional areas in retail, enterprise-wide BI has emerged as a
top two priority in terms of planned deployment within the next 24 months.
To obtain a complimentary copy of the report, please visit:
http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=5366.
Aberdeen's 2007 BI survey results showed that 56% of Best-in-Class
retailers' top BI-related strategy was to identify customer segment buying
trends and patterns. While customer segmentation remains a priority of
retailers, this year our results demonstrate a move towards the "bigger
picture applicability of BI" from an enterprise-wide perspective.
"Leading retailers such as Wal-Mart, Staples, and Best Buy have already
adopted an enterprise-wide BI strategy," states Sahir Anand, senior analyst
and chief author of the business intelligence in retail benchmark report.
"The reasons for this 'silo to big picture' shift in the BI roadmap are due
to the following internal and external factors characterizing the nature of
retail operations for the rest of 2008, 2009, and beyond. High cost of
goods sold and low consumer confidence is currently impacting 80% of
retailers surveyed. This has led to the need for incisive category,
department, and channel-level business information that can act as a
catalyst for improved integrated retail planning, productivity, and
performance for the corporate network, stores, and other sales channels."
Seventy-four percent (74%) of Best-in-Class retailers are currently
creating enterprise-wide BI guidelines when compared to 50% of all other
retailers. According to co-author and principal analyst David Hatch, "On
the surface, creating customer- and operations-related guidelines on an
enterprise-wide basis seems like an academic and rudimentary exercise.
However, in actuality it takes several years for all the user organizations
in retail to perfect a common charter of guidelines and practices to
harmonize the BI foundational elements of forecasting, planning, and
budgeting for varied retail departments such as marketing, merchandising,
finance, procurement, or supply chain. The ability to deliver true
enterprise-wide access to BI will inevitably require best-in-class
retailers to obtain a full range of capabilities, from data collection,
integration, cleansing, data warehousing, modeling and application
development, to reporting, dashboards, scorecarding and ad hoc analytics."
Only 35% of Best-in-Class retailers report having "end-to-end" BI platforms
encompassing these tools and capabilities today. Aberdeen research
indicates that this is in line with Average levels of BI platform adoption
across all industries. Through the research contained in this report,
Best-in-Class companies should be able to identify the components that are
currently lacking.
A complimentary copy of this report is made available due in part by the
following underwriters: Microsoft and Tectura. To obtain a complimentary
copy of the report, please visit:
http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=5366.
For additional access to complimentary Retail Research, please visit
http://research.aberdeen.com/index.php/-retail.
About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company
Aberdeen is a leading provider of fact-based research and market
intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more
than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely
positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating
demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment
analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets,
corporations turn to Aberdeen™ for insights that drive decisions.
As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in
context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's
analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of
Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement -
Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role
Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit
Aberdeen
http://www.aberdeen.com or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more
about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to
http://www.harte-hanks.com.
© 2008 Aberdeen Group, Inc., a Harte-Hanks Company
451 D Street, Suite 710
Boston, Massachusetts 02210-1928
Telephone: (617) 854-5200
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www.aberdeen.com
Contact Information: Media Contact:
Sahir Anand
Senior Retail Analyst
Aberdeen Harte-Hanks
Sahir.Anand@aberdeen.com
David Hatch
Principal BI Analyst
Aberdeen Harte-Hanks
David.Hatch@aberdeen.com