VISION InSight
PCMS
Overview
The VISION InSight analytics module allows global retail and hospitality organizations to gain insight into all aspects of their business. With extracts of data at near real time, retailers can analyze inventory, sales volumes, cost analysis, product, and geographic performance as well as labor costing against sales. The solution also provides budgeting and planning of store operations or merchandising.
Key capabilities include:
- Drag-and-drop authoring that incorporates data, text, charts, graphs, and images
- Automatic calculations
- Configured standard reports through prompts and toolbar commands
- Customized dashboards
- Centralized and off-line merchandise planning capabilities
- Personalized report bursting to multiple locations in multiple formats
These capabilities complement the existing PCMS retail portfolio, further enhancing return on investment. VISION InSight is POS log compliant and is therefore POS agnostic. It can be leveraged against multiple POS systems, if required.
Benefits
- Monitor operations in four key areas: sales and expenses, marketing, inventory, and labor
- Quickly identify trends for rapid response
- Analyze key indicators by location, by product, by marketing campaign, and so on
- Analyze performance over time
Sales and expense reporting:
- Sales and cost trending—across time, location, products
- Product comparison
- Store performance comparison
- Sales versus cost
- Net/gross margin
- Returns, refunds, discounts
Marketing reporting:
- Campaign effectiveness
- Analysis by customer habits or demographics
Inventory reporting:
- Inventory turns
- Stock by products
- Inventory alerts
Labor reporting:
- Hours to dollars to sales
- Skill mix
- Labor and overtime usage
Features
- Customized dashboards allow each level of the organization to address different needs
- Drill-through reporting for quick and easy access to the details
- Structured reporting as well as reports that allow ad-hoc enquiries
- A variety of reporting formats (e.g., crosstab, graph)
Architecture
VISION InSight leverages IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence software. The system runs in a Windows environment. Components include the following:Extraction routines read XML data feeds from your POS system via Data Manager.
Data is loaded into a pre-built data mart, which resides in MS SQL Server, Oracle, or DB2 databases. The database selection is based on user preference, which is often dependent on the skill set in house.
Framework Manager is the foundation for reporting and storing the metadata.
Cognos Connection provides the Web access portal to all reports and dashboards. Security can be set to determine what the user’s experience is.
Cognos reporting is used for standard reports and Cognos analysis is used for drag and drop report authoring.
Utilizes Cognos scorecarding with key indicators built into the dashboards, and notification abilities are provided through event management
Planning and forecasting uses Cognos Planning software
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