Virginia, USA, 10 April 2007: ESRI, BearingPoint, one of the world’s leading management and technology consulting firms and SAS, a business intelligence firm, announced today the availability of a unique, integrated market-planning solution for commercial retailers called Market Planning and Portfolio Optimization (MPPO).
Commercial retailers are constantly faced with critical decisions on where to locate new stores, close underperforming stores or remodel stores to increase revenues. The MPPO solution is a leading-edge tool that combines best-in-class consulting, GIS, business intelligence and predictive analysis services and software solutions to provide retailers with detailed insight into the planning process. This insight helps them forecast sales of new locations, estimate impact on existing stores, model optimal return on invested capital, and improve visibility and control over every aspect of the corporation’s combined retail real estate activities.
The integrated market-planning solution will reduce cycle times for new store development and help retailers with strategic planning by providing increased insight into market drivers and conditions. This insight will not only help retailers ensure that new stores achieve higher sales levels and existing stores experience lower sales transfer, but help them increase overall market share. In addition, the solution provides significant increases in efficiency over other planning tools by lowering costs associated with existing portfolios and allowing retailers to manage more sites with fewer resources.
“BearingPoint has a dedicated consulting practice focused on helping commercial retail clients develop great sites fast, and this solution is best-in-class,” said Jack Thompson, a managing director in the BearingPoint consumer markets practice.
“This solution establishes a new benchmark in market analytics by combining proven best practices in real-estate decision-making with leading technology for predictive statistical analysis and advanced spatial analysis,” said Mike Johnson, director of commercial sales at ESRI. “Results from this solution will provide new insights that will undoubtedly impact market-planning and site-location decisions.”
According to Alexi Sarnevitz, SAS senior director of global retail strategy, “With the demise of the mass market, today’s most successful retailers are pursuing a consumer-centric approach to all elements of their business. Assortments, pricing, inventory, service offerings and even store designs and layout are being tailored to best serve dominant local-market consumer segments.
