Do You Use Your B.I. to Look at Your K.P.I.'s?

– Don Capman

I wonder who invented acronyms. It must have been a doctor or a lawyer because they didn’t want the rest of us to know what they were talking about, thereby justifying their exorbitant fees. When we would hear them speak in acronyms, it made them sound so smart and made us feel so stupid. Well, we retailers got sick and tired of feeling stupid, so we invented our own acronyms. Now, we are smart as well!

Last month I wrote an article on measuring the success of your business. In that article, I pointed out some key areas that should be monitored on a regular basis. Other than stock reporting included in Retail Pro or any other good POS/Inventory Control systems, I didn’t point you toward any proactive tools. In this article I am going to tell you about an analytical, proactive tool that will blow your socks off. The name of the tool is ProMax and it was written specifically for Retail Pro Users.

But let’s get back to the acronyms in this article’s title. Raise your hands if you guessed what they stand for. If you raised your hands, you can put them down now since no one is there to see you. BI stands for Business Intelligence and KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator. All of the “big guys” like Wal-Mart and Target could not survive if their business systems did not include Business Intelligence and Key Performance Indicators. Unfortunately for the “not so big guys,” this functionality was just too complex and costly, UNTIL NOW.

Most reputable POS/Inventory Control systems are great at producing data. The problem with volumes of data is that there’s no guarantee it will help you make timely and effective business decisions. Business Intelligence analyzes complex transactional data and presents it in an easy to read and actionable form so you can make decisions quickly and confidently. ProMax analyzes the raw transactional data from Retail Pro and produces understandable results in a report or a graph. ProMax is capable of providing an analysis on more than 70 Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) critical in running any successful retail enterprise.

In addition to providing analysis of KPI’s, ProMax allows you to set alerts that warn you automatically when one of those indicators is either overperforming or underperforming. For example, if you made the buy of a lifetime on swim suits but you had to buy a gross to get the deal, ProMax will monitor the sell through KPI and let you know how the item is performing. This will help you manage your markdowns or re-orders in a timely fashion before it is too late. This is the hallmark of a truly proactive system.

The following is a summary of the KPI’s that are addressed by the ProMax solution.

This tool is so amazing and affordable; you will find that you won’t be able to do business without it. For more information on ProMax, you can email me at donc@jdapos.com.