The intelligent store: Driving customer-valued innovation through deeper insight

Meeting customer needs and reacting quickly to conditions “on the floor” have long been among the primary challenges faced by retailers. Today, these challenges are joined by a new generation of customer trends and competitive threats. To thrive in this environment, retailers must be able to quickly make the right decisions to respond to both the market and their customers, while maintaining the flexibility needed to continually enhance the delivery of products and services.

This dynamic market is driving retailers towards innovation that delivers deeper customer and product insight while bridging the gap between corporate operations and individual store performance. Store-level managers and associates need real-time access to key information, a “bird’s-eye view” of sales patterns—and even supply chain performance. At the same time, that information needs to be readily available to the corporate level to support decision-making and enable the provisioning of resources needed to maximize sales and profitability throughout the enterprise. As a result, in their search for an intelligent store, retailers have had to balance their desire for top-down control with the challenge of getting centrally collected data to the store level in time to have a real impact on sales and store performance.