MEDIA RELEASE PR37807
Microsoft Supports Malaysian Retailer's Aggressive Plans to Expand
NEW YORK, Jan. 12 /PRNewswire-AsiaNet/ --
Better, near-real-time information is needed to support triple
the number of stores in 2010.
Microsoft Corp. today announced that MYDIN Mohamed Holdings Berhad of
Malaysia (MYDIN) has decided on Microsoft Dynamics AX for Retail and
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for its reporting and dashboards.
MYDIN also decided on Profitbase Studio for its data warehouse and online
analytical processing (OLAP) cubes to support its ambitious online growth
plans for 2010. MYDIN's aggressive growth objectives and need for better,
near-real-time information for its decision-makers and suppliers drove the
decision. The announcement was made at the National Retail Federation (NRF)
Annual Convention & Expo at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New
York.
As a leader in store systems, business intelligence (BI) and digital
marketing IT solutions for retail, Microsoft helps companies such as MYDIN
build their competitive position in today's challenging economic environment.
MYDIN, Malaysia's largest homegrown retailer, plans to triple its stores
from the present 49 to 125 by 2012. The No. 1 challenge for MYDIN's IT team
is trying to make sense of 200 million transactions so that better business
decisions are made in near-real time. The existing reporting system was not
flexible - it took two weeks to turn a report around, and ad hoc analysis was
nonexistent.
"We have a situation where our IT infrastructure for reporting is not
able to keep up with the expansion of store formats and the number of
stores," said Malik Murad Ali, IT director for MYDIN. "We currently have two
enterprise resource planning and two point-of-sale systems. We are migrating
our core ERP to Microsoft Dynamics AX over the next two years, but until that
happens we need a way to consolidate the data from these systems and provide
the reports and dashboards that our people and suppliers need to make better
decisions."
MYDIN is implementing Microsoft Dynamics AX for Retail to drive major
operational improvements by automating and integrating critical retail
processes from stores to supply chain. This will also enable centralized
management of retail stores with near-real-time information, which will
prepare MYDIN for its planned business growth.
With its growth strategy well under way, MYDIN's IT team put a strategic
plan in place that included upgrading and consolidating its IT
infrastructure, adopting a data warehouse and OLAP cube solution that
supported the Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS) data
standard, in which information from its existing and future business systems
could be consolidated.
MYDIN decided on Profitbase 2009 to consolidate data from two enterprise
resource planning (ERP) and two point-of-sale (POS) systems because of the
easy-to-use development environment and the ready-to-use OLAP cube templates
for retail that support the ARTS data standard. The retail templates can be
deployed quickly and provide metrics for item sales, hourly sales, hourly
item sales, efficiency and much more. Standard dimensions are provided for
sorting and filtering the NRF's ARTS metrics and key performance indicators
(KPIs) and include store, store type, department, category, article, hour,
day, week and month. In addition, the Profitbase finance OLAP cube template
will be used to group the ERP general ledgers so that a consolidated
financial status of the company is available automatically.
Microsoft Technology for Information Delivery and Analysis
MYDIN is deploying Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to provide all
levels of the organization and its suppliers with information. Dashboards and
scorecards, which will have standard financial and retail KPIs, will be
deployed for everyone from the board of directors and executive management to
central merchandisers, branch operations managers and suppliers. In addition,
analysis capability will be provided for robust data mining and ad hoc
analysis.
"MYDIN demonstrates how retailers today can use IT to prepare for growth
in this challenging economic environment," said Brendan O'Meara, managing
director for the Worldwide Retail Industry group at Microsoft. "The
innovative use of IT can enable retailers to dramatically reduce costs,
attract and retain customers, and accelerate business growth to gain
competitive advantage. Through delivery of better-connected shopping
experiences, online retailers such as MYDIN can enhance their brand and
cement customer loyalty by adding tangible value in today's environment, in
which customers are increasingly in control."
"With the Profitbase-Microsoft BI solution, we expect to have better
visibility to our top-selling products, allowing us to make sure adequate
store inventory levels are maintained," Ali said. "We also will share product
inventory levels with our suppliers so they can better service our stores.
Overall, with better visibility and the resulting optimization and proactive
decision-making, we expect a positive impact to the bottom line of at least 5
percent."
About Microsoft in Retail
Microsoft is the leading provider of global retail information technology
solutions. Microsoft is No. 1 in store systems, in terms of retail
point-of-service operating systems. Microsoft also is the leader in business
intelligence with the vast majority of retailers using Excel as a decision
support tool. Microsoft also leads in digital marketing with the most
comprehensive end-to-end solutions. Its digital marketing solutions range
from the stack (Windows, Windows Server, SQL Server, .NET, Visual Studio) to
online (Commerce Server) to mobile (Windows Mobile), and from digital
advertising (Bing, adCenter) to entertainment (Xbox, Xbox LIVE, Zune,
Silverlight). Microsoft delivers connected experiences for stores, commerce
and the enterprise via the "three screens" (PC, browser, mobile) for easy
access across your digital world.
Microsoft's Retail Group provides software that helps retailers thrive in
today's competitive global marketplace by meeting the demand for a highly
personalized and connected shopper experience. Microsoft helps retailers
deliver a consistent shopping experience through seamless multichannel
integration and via innovative technologies and mobile and new social
networking channels. Through a combination of Microsoft- and partner-based
solutions, retailers can turn data into insight, ideas into action and change
into opportunity. More information about Microsoft's Retail Group can be
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in
software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize
their full potential.
SOURCE: Microsoft Corp.
CONTACT: Wendy Grover of Microsoft,
+1-425-705-7609,
wegrover@microsoft.com
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