Comshare merges best practice with best process on Oracle technology.WILMINGTON, Del.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 10, 1997-- Comshare Announces the Arthur(TM) Enterprise Suite for Retail Comshare Retail, a division of Comshare, Inc. (NASDAQ/NM:CSRE CSRE Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity CSRE Closed System Respirator Evaluator ) and the retail industry's leading provider of decision support applications (DSS (1) (Digital Signature Standard) A National Security Administration standard for authenticating an electronic message. See RSA and digital signature. (2) (Digital Satellite S ), announced today a new class of retail application, the Arthur(TM) Enterprise Suite. The Suite is the first retail solution that methodically supports the process of strategic decision making, turning company vision into successful execution. It is designed to help retailers focus on the resources and factors that result in satisfied customers and maximum profits. The Suite innovates the use of relational technology, delivering the first truly complete retail decision support application. "Retailers have struggled for years to successfully deploy technology," says Comshare senior director of retail strategy, Peter Charness. "The hard-fought advances in supply chain automation, built on the frustrations of over-budget, under-delivered, and late projects, are culminating in a new level playing field See net neutrality. . Winning retailers do more than reduce costs. By making better decisions than their competition, they are moving quickly with new formats and new products to rapidly increase revenues, build loyalty with existing customers, and create new customers. These advances aren't accomplished by building new purchase order management software, adding more EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) The electronic communication of business transactions, such as orders, confirmations and invoices, between organizations. Third parties provide EDI services that enable organizations with different equipment to connect. , or inventory control applications. Winning retailers need applications that focus on the management of the business -- applications that will help them excel at Verb 1. excel at - be good at; "She shines at math" shine at excel, surpass, stand out - distinguish oneself; "She excelled in math" strategic decision making. In short," adds Charness, "winning retailers need Arthur." The Arthur Enterprise Suite is comprised of five base modules that mirror the business process of a retail organization. Comshare Retail brings thousands of customer years of successful retail decision support experience to bear. The Suite allows retailers to benefit from industry-wide best practices imbedded within its applications. It integrates the critical business processes of planning, assortment, tracking and analyzing performance, and allocating resources. Applications are also customizable. Customers can imbed im·bed v. Variant of embed. imbed Verb [-bedding, -bedded] same as embed Verb 1. the skills of their own experts into the business process so that everyone within the organization can exploit its own unique business practices. "Retailers typically have difficulty recovering from the turnover of skilled people in the merchandise office. Cost cutting in past years has made succession planning Management Succession Planning In organizational development, succession planning is the process of identifying and preparing suitable employees through mentoring, training and job rotation, to replace key players — such as the chief executive officer (CEO) — more difficult," says Carol Blotter A written record of arrests and other occurrences maintained by the police. The report kept by the police when a suspect is booked, which involves the written recording of facts about the person's arrest and the charges against him or her. BLOTTER, mer. law. , Comshare vice president of North American North American named after North America. North American blastomycosis see North American blastomycosis. North American cattle tick see boophilusannulatus. Retail Sales. "When a skilled buyer leaves a company, it can take up to two full seasons for a replacement to really fill the shoes left behind. Now, with the Arthur Enterprise Suite, retailers can take the methods used by their most skilled merchants, and make them widely available throughout the organization." Modular Design In the context of systems engineering, modular design — or "modularity in design" — is an approach aiming to subdivide a system into smaller parts (modules) that can be independently created and then used in different systems to drive multiple functionalities. Arthur(TM) Planning -- crystallizes the retailer's vision by creating fact-based resource plans at the necessary levels of detail. Re-architected for the Enterprise Suite for deployment in the Oracle environment, Arthur Planning's release 4.3 further enhances functionality with a set of new features for over 350 existing Comshare Retail customers. Arthur(TM) Assortment Planning Assortment Planning is a mission critical function for retailers. This is the place where the retailer meets the customer. The place where the retailer must buy exactly what their customers will buy. -- supports the complex business process of matching the qualitative product goals with the quantitative financial goals of the organization. Arthur Assortment Planning provides the merchant with optimized product selection capabilities. The application uses creative techniques for goal seeking The ability to calculate a formula backward to obtain a desired input. For example, given the goal gross margin = 50% and the range of possible inputs, goal seeking attempts to obtain the optimum input. on those attributes that are important to the customer, such as color, price point, size, brands, or the square footage required for compelling product presentation. Arthur(TM) Allocation -- completes the merchandise cycle by providing a vehicle to execute the plans and optimize store distributions by bringing results and trends into the decision making process. True store targeting is accomplished by focusing on each store's attributes. The powerful "saved methods" function allows the best practices that each organization's experts use to be deployed to everyone. Arthur(TM) Performance Tracking -- available today on a number of different platforms, is being totally re-architected and released for the Oracle environment. Designed for parallel processing parallel processing, the concurrent or simultaneous execution of two or more parts of a single computer program, at speeds far exceeding those of a conventional computer. , large volumes, and achieving breakthrough speeds for loading and calculating information, the application completes the integration of the Suite. Unlike tools that claim to turn "data into information" for the retailer, it was built specifically to deal with retail problems of massive detail, short processing windows, frequent reorganizations of product and location classifications, and complex calculations like open-to-buy, and forward cover. Arthur(TM) Performance Analyst -- a fully pre-built retail decision support workbench. To be released in 1997, it will further enhance Performance Tracking. Using advanced visualization techniques, and Comshare's unique question and answer (Q & A) interface, Performance Analyst will enable strategic decision making to be executed at all levels of the organization. It will empower every member of the enterprise, no matter what their skills, experience, or background, to look at the business the way the experts do. Comshare Decision Map(TM) Methodology "Comshare has developed a unique methodology for customizing the business intelligence that is built into our packaged software See software package. applications," says senior vice president, Steve Tonissen. "Comshare Decision Map Methodology is used by Comshare Retail to take all of the components of successful retail applications into account. Decision maps literally help chart and automate the retail decision processes that lead to world-class competitiveness," concludes Tonissen. Comshare Application Architecture(TM) The Arthur Enterprise Suite is constructed on a sound technological base, using Comshare's Application Architecture (CAA Caa See CCC. ). Its robust three-tier client/server A three-way interaction in a client/server environment, in which the user interface is stored in the client, the bulk of the business application logic is stored in one or more servers, and the data are stored in a database server. See client/server. architecture allows for rapid application development, and helps insulate applications from operating systems Operating systems can be categorized by technology, ownership, licensing, working state, usage, and by many other characteristics. In practice, many of these groupings may overlap. , platforms, and feeder system changes. The CAA is the basis for Comshare's recently announced Commander DecisionWeb(TM) application, which will put the information contained in the Arthur Enterprise Suite into the hands of Internet users. Retailers will be able to access information needs from around the world using Internet technology. "Comshare's Application Architecture is a major part of Comshare's strategic plan," says Wally Wrathall, president and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of Comshare. "Using its design, we can develop applications that incorporate `best-of-breed' technology components in a transparent fashion so that the end user focuses on the business task, unaware of the underlying architecture and technologies." Comshare's Whole Product Solutions(TM) Comshare leverages its considerable retail expertise to provide its customers with whole product solutions. Retail Special Interest Groups (SIG) and user groups provide customers with the unique opportunity to share and learn from the best. Each Comshare Retail application comes with a precise implementation methodology. Comshare and its consulting partners offer whatever service retail customers need to innovate and implement these DSS solutions. About Comshare Comshare, The Decision Support Company(TM), develops, markets and supports complete client/server decision support applications designed to improve business analysis, planning, reporting and decision making. The company focuses its applications software in four major markets: retail, consumer goods consumer goods Any tangible commodity purchased by households to satisfy their wants and needs. Consumer goods may be durable or nondurable. Durable goods (e.g., autos, furniture, and appliances) have a significant life span, often defined as three years or more, and , financial services The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please [ improve this article] or discuss the issue on the talk page. and general industry solutions. One of the top 50 independent software companies, Comshare has over 3,000 customers worldwide, many of which are Fortune 1000 and Financial Times Top 1000 companies. No company in the world has more experience building and supporting real-world retail decision support solutions than Comshare. For more information about Comshare Retail products and services, call 1-800-479-RETAIL. For more information about Comshare products and services, call 1-800-922-7979 or see our home page on the worldwide web at http://www.comshare.com Comshare is a registered trademark of Comshare, Inc. Arthur, Comshare Decision Map, Comshare Application Architecture, Comshare Whole Product Solutions, and The Decision Support Company are trademarks of Comshare, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective holders. CONTACT: Comshare, Inc. Peter Charness, 313/769-6195 or Comshare, Inc. Larry Negrich, 313/769-6047 or Eiler Communications Larry T. Eiler, 313/761-3399 |
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