Lawson Retail Insight Applications Help Retailers Strategically Grow Their Business Through Customer-Centric Advanced Analytics
Leading-Edge Retail Focus Using Existing Data in Innovative Ways Is Key to Improving Retail Sales
ST. PAUL, Minn., Jan. 29, 2004 - Lawson Software, Inc. (Nasdaq: LWSN)
announced at the recent National Retail Federation 93rd Annual
Conference held at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City
that Lawson`s Retail InSight products, featuring proprietary
customer-centric advanced analytics, are gaining momentum in the U.S.
and European marketplace.
Attracting customers and nurturing their loyalty has become a huge issue for retailers. Increasing competitive pressures to maintain profitability while delivering superior value makes every customer transaction increasingly precious. As competition increases, the future success and even survival of retailers depends on their ability to harness the value hidden in customer transaction data.
"The business systems retailers use every day generate mountains of data that should be used to get a better understanding of their customers - where, when, why they buy, and how these changing preferences dictate enterprise-wide retail business decisions," said Jeff Roster, principal analyst, Gartner`s Global Industries, Retail. "Converting data to actionable knowledge is a real challenge, but those companies that do it well can achieve a real competitive advantage." - more -
Lawson`s Advanced Category InSight and Store Performance InSight help retailers address both revenue and margin challenges. The applications enable retailers to perform innovative analyses to better position themselves within the highly competitive landscape of the retail industry. With a step-by-step analysis process specific to the retail industry, the software gives retailers specific recommendations distributed to all operations that can be translated into immediate action.
"Retailers are paying more attention to the basic premise that the customer is king and stepping up loyalty growth and the customer experience as high priorities," said Carol Mackenzie, retail market director at Lawson Software. "Lawson believes that retailers should focus on why the customer is shopping in their store instead of what an individual department can sell that customer on a particular day."
As an established market leader in customer-centric advanced analytics, Lawson is also crafting new vocabulary for this new domain. The new vocabulary creates words and metrics that describe the richness and usefulness of the information coming from a retailer`s customer transaction data. An example of a new, advanced metric is a Pivotal item measurement - a proprietary mathematical representation of how an item "reaches out" or "permeates" market baskets. This measure helps the retailer define the most important items that may be used to build a certain type of basket or reinforce a certain purchasing behavior. This may take several forms, such as through specialized promotions, innovative pricing, marketing, store and shelf layouts, etc.
Lawson Retail InSight applications are also being used to help retailers and suppliers work together to get greater insight into customers needs. In October 2003, Sainsbury`s, one of the UK`s largest supermarket chains, began offering its suppliers the use of loyalty card data and advanced analysis provided through Lawson and TNS. This collaborative program provides in-depth analysis giving insight into what customers want from products and services available from the supermarket.
This project followed a successful pilot carried out earlier in 2003 when Sainsbury`s shared a combination of product and store based analysis with a selection of key suppliers. Feedback was extremely positive and this led Sainsbury`s to offer this information to all its suppliers.
Andrew Ground, Sainsbury`s customer marketing director, said: "By providing suppliers with this information, they can develop products
which put the customer even closer to the heart of our business and
theirs. Working with TNS and Lawson, we are able to give move
actionable and valuable information than we could using just loyalty
card data."
About Advanced Category InSight:
Advanced Category InSight provides retailers customer behavior intelligence through correlative analysis of market basket data, allowing for improved marketing, category/cross category, range, and private label initiatives. This harnesses the power of proprietary data by delivering results through five business issue-based modules:
-- Basket Rewards Analyzer - helps retailers to build customer
loyalty and revenue through cross-purchasing analysis and utilize
data to identify specific traffic builders and improve marketing
effectiveness.
-- Cross Category Analyzer - uses quantitative and graphical analysis
of product purchasing and recognizes theme/event-based purchasing
behaviors in order to assist retailers in improving category
performance and revenues.
-- Range Deletions Analyzer - enables department managers to rank
product categories and identify under performing products.
-- Private Label Analyzer - identifies private label product
strengths and weaknesses.
-- Product Insights Analyzer - used to provide timely and robust
negotiating information to national account managers and gives a
Trading Summary Report for managing portfolio and range reviews.
About Store Performance InSight:
Store Performance InSight combines store characteristics and product data in order to provide retailers with insight into key attributes that contribute to top performing stores through the analysis of store attributes, assortment, demographics, and shopper behaviors. This translates into actionable information that can improve customer experience, increase return on capital investments and grow category contributions.
"At ASDA, we are continually striving to improve our understanding of customer needs and motivators," said Gerard Bartley, business development manager, e-commerce ASDA. "Lawson`s dynamic customer modeling software helped us gain valuable insight into customer`s current purchasing behavior and has helped us predict future behavioral trends. We were very impressed with Lawson`s analysis of customer transactions, and above all, chose them because of their Oxford-based team`s extensive experience and ability to utilize technology to drive commercial decision-making."
Lawson Retail Solutions were developed specifically to assist high-volume retailers in improving net profitability by helping to increase revenues, reduce costs and more effectively deploy their workforce. Lawson Retail Solutions encompass Enterprise Operations, Retail Operations, Enterprise Visibility and Retail InSight - a comprehensive set of solutions that includes merchandising, supply chain, store operations, financials, human resources, procurement and enterprise performance management.
Lawson`s industry-focused software solutions help retailers integrate the systems they use to run and grow their businesses. Lawson customers include five of the top 10 U.S.-based retailers, eight of the top 20 apparel retailers, seven of the top 25 grocery chains, 23 of the top 100 restaurant chains and 20 of the top 100 specialty chains.
About Lawson Software
Lawson Software provides business process software solutions that help services organizations in the retail, healthcare, professional services, public sector, financial services and other strategic markets achieve competitive advantage. Lawson`s solutions include enterprise performance management, distribution, financials, human resources, procurement, retail operations and service process optimization. Headquartered in St. Paul, Minn., Lawson has offices and affiliates serving North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. Additional information about Lawson is available at www.lawson.com.
For additional information contact:
Terry Blake
Director of Corporate Communications
651-767-4766
terry.blake@lawson.com
The CBK Group
Carol Romeo
201-556-9404 ext. 110
cromeo@cbkgroup.com
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