Epicor launches retail business intelligence solution

15 Jan '10

4 min read

Epicor Software Corporation, a leading provider of enterprise business software solutions to the midmarket and Global 1000 companies, announced the newest version of its retail Business Intelligence (BI) solution, Epicor Retail Business Intelligence 2.0, which provides new and enhanced features to help retailers gain critical and timely business insight to gauge and improve execution and assist in enterprise decision-making.

In addition to a new enhanced user interface that supports streamlined and intuitive information access, new features include an extended data model encompassing a broader range of retail operations across the enterprise.

Additionally, Epicor Retail BI 2.0 now supports the ability to integrate customer-defined external data elements. With this capability, retailers can further extend their data model, enabling them to access and analyze critical information and gauge performance across a broad range of data streams.

Epicor Retail BI 2.0 features a sophisticated retail data model powered by Microsoft business intelligence (BI) tools. Using a data warehouse and cube optimized for queries, the solution supports custom reporting with automatic drill downs, rich analysis capabilities, dashboards to monitor critical business metrics, plus a variety of direct action tools.

"The new features in our Epicor Business Intelligence 2.0 solution gives retailers greater insight across retail operations for improved management and business execution," said David Henning, executive vice president and general manager for Epicor Retail. "The expanded functionality gives retailers the ability to react to changing market conditions, identify customer segments and improve purchasing, forecasting and profitability while optimizing overall store performance."

"Business intelligence is absolutely essential given the current state of the economy, and retailers operating on very thin margins cannot afford wrong guesses about trends and customer needs -- all of which can have an immediate and devastating impact on profits and even viability," said Sahir Anand, retail research director at Aberdeen Group. "In addition to making better buying and merchandising decisions, access to business intelligence can help retailers be more strategic in areas such as store layout. For example, by understanding how product affinities work and applying the rules of suggestive selling, retailers can place low-selling products next to a related product that is a strong seller to increase their conversion rates and optimize sales. Retailers can also reduce labor costs by ensuring that more employees are on the floor during busy times and less during slower periods."

"Retailers today will benefit from the ability to integrate disparate 'silos' and unlock value by connecting systems that drive new efficiencies and accelerate innovation across global distribution and services networks," said David Gruehn, U.S. retailindustry solutions director, Microsoft Corp. "By bringing to the marketplace an integrated and interoperable solution that provides single-version visibility, manageability and usability of a retailer's data, the Epicor Retail BI 2.0 solution empowers retailers to make better business decisions and drive improved performance throughout the organization, using the familiar Microsoft Office interfaces they work with everyday."

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