Retail Operations Management

Retail operations management is becoming more complicated—mergers and acquisitions, rising costs, and aggressive competition all make their mark on a retail operation's profit margin. And nowhere does this complexity become more apparent than at the storefront: the critical, customer-facing part of a retail operation. To handle the convolutions of managing retail operations performance in this ever-changing environment, progressive retailers are investing in technology solutions. And the most successful retailers are investing in Cognos for a solution specifically tailored to today's retail challenges.

Cognos Delivers Solutions for Retail Operations Management

With over 30 percent of the world's top 250 retailers as customers already, Cognos has added retail operations expertise to the technology, analytical applications, best practices, and network of partners that make it such a successful business intelligence software provider. Most of these Cognos customers have moved from ineffective technology—confusing, disconnected spreadsheets, unsophisticated ERP or general ledger programs, or generic off-the-shelf packages—to a Cognos performance management solution specifically designed for retail operations management. The Cognos performance system is an open and adaptive solution that builds on an organization's ERP, packaged applications, and database investments. With performance blueprints—a pre-built performance management framework, including planning, metrics, and reporting—Cognos retail customers can align strategy with execution and drive better performance for their organizations.

Cognos Integrates Planning and Business Intelligence with a Retail Operations Emphasis

The combination of enterprise planning and business intelligence tools in the Cognos performance blueprints provides an integrated platform for the complex scenario modeling, planning, budgeting, and forecasting needed in retail operations management. Analysis and reports on critical information, such as past operational effectiveness, development costs, and projected revenue lift, help retail operations management to make informed decisions rapidly in the face of changing market conditions. The planning blueprint has simplified and streamlined planning and forecasting functionality that allows retailers to reduce the planning cycle time and re-forecast quickly to adjust to external factors affecting operations. Built-in best practices for initiative planning, integrated workflow, profile-driven expense and revenue planning, and 'what-if' modeling lets you keep pace with changing consumer needs, marketplace trends, and shifts in the retail operations environment—and all in a zero-footprint, Web-based, easy-to-use solution from Cognos.

Learn more about Cognos solutions for operations management in retail here.