IBM and Sky IT Partner to Provide Store-Level Performance Data
IBM and Sky IT Group have partnered to help fashion and apparel suppliers to more intelligently take advantage of consumer trends by equipping them with a powerful software as a service (SaaS) offering.
Utilizing IBM's DB2 database software and IBM BladeCenter server technology, Sky IT Group developed SkyPAD, a SaaS-based dashboard designed to allow manufacturers, distributors and retailers to view their product sales performance at the store level. The dashboard provides statistical, graphical and image views of products sold at retail stores, allowing suppliers and retailers to make production, sales and merchandising decisions based on real-time facts.
The dashboard eliminates problems associated with manually intensive reporting techniques, such as spreadsheets, that do not integrate or automatically update information, making it difficult to track sales trends and make business decisions, and costing businesses time and money.
After integrating SkyPAD in less than four weeks, the apparel company Theory used the web-based tool to increase the efficiency of its business. Theory fully linked its ERP data with that of its retailers to determine marketplace trends. For example, if data indicated that sales of a certain color cardigan were steadily increasing while sales of another color were decreasing, the company would be able to follow the trend and increase shipments of the more popular color cardigan.
"Prior to implementing SkyPAD, we had a static service that would be updated only once a week and wasn't readily accessible by all who needed the information," said Keitaro Shigemasa, CIO for Theory. "We now have a much more flexible platform where information sharing has improved, we are able to easily integrate data from retailers with our internal ERP data, and our overall running costs have significantly decreased."
for more information: www.skyitgroup.com, www.ibm.com/isv/marketing/saas
