LAWSON SHIPS FIRST OF 80+ RETAIL PERFORMANCE
INDICATOR SUITES
Lawson Software, The Global Solutions Company, has announced general availability of the LAWSON INSIGHT Retail Performance Indicator Suite, a pre-packaged intelligent data warehouse for retail industry analysis that is accessible via the Web. In addition to the more than 200 out-of-the-box standard business measures now available, Lawson's newest retail-specific performance indicators include analysis of the primary business indicators for the retail industry, such as sales revenue, cost of goods and labor costs. Lawson made the announcement at the Food Marketing Institute's Marketechnics '99 exhibition in New Orleans.
Performance Indicators being released include sales by time and organization, franchise/royalty fees, cost of goods sold, gross margin, inventory turnover rate, inventory as a percent of sales, inventory shrink, trade promotion costs, labor expense, average hourly wage and others. The LAWSON INSIGHT Retail Performance Indicator Suite includes roles for chief executive officers, chief financial officers and chief operating officers which are currently available. Additional roles being released specifically for the retail industry include store operations for vice president of operations and regional/district/store managers and controllers.
The LAWSON INSIGHT Performance Indicator Suite anticipates 80 percent or more of the most commonly asked business questions for each targeted executive role, then uses on-line analytical processing (OLAP) and algorithms to program the answers and pre-populate the role-based data marts. The answers are then accessible on the desktop via a personal computer in a client/server environment, or using a browser leveraging Lawson's unique Self-Evident Applications (SEA).
Lawson is the first of the major enterprise resource planning vendors to deliver a fully Web-deployable, enterprise-wide performance management solution to market, and already counts retailers Wilsons The Leather Experts, Rainforest Cafe and L.L. Bean among its LAWSON INSIGHT Performance Indicator Suite customers. In December 1998, Lawson announced that it has more than 83 customers using its analytic solutions.
"One of the more profound benefits of the Performance Indicator Suite is the increased speed of reporting cycles," said Mark Robinow, chief financial officer, Rainforest Cafe. "That's a huge benefit for us considering our 50 percent growth last year. We also have a unique organizational aspect in that each of our restaurants contains a retail store. With Lawson's performance indicator solution, we have the flexibility to track the measurements of the restaurants and the stores separately and evaluate which areas of our operation are performing to their maximum potential."
Lawson is also currently shipping the new LAWSON INSIGHT P.I. Publisher, an end-user tool available for companies that want to further personalize their own organizational roles, views and performance indicators. With the P.I. Publisher, the same tool Lawson uses to develop its pre-built performance indicators, Lawson customers can add their own unique operational roles and performance indicators as a standard part of the Performance Indicator Suite.
"Retail is a highly competitive industry, and analytic applications that can aid executives and managers in identifying and targeting areas where cost savings and greater efficiencies can be achieved are a definite competitive advantage," said Patricia Vekich-Waldron, director of retail industry marketing, Lawson Software. "Because the LAWSON INSIGHT P.I. solution is role-based, executives and managers get access to the information they need most to perform their particular function. Solutions like the Retail Performance Indicator Suite and Franchise Management are really putting Lawson ahead as an information technology leader in the retail market."
Lawson Software, The Global Solutions Company, is a $200 million provider of self-evident, role-based Web solutions for financials, human resources, procurement, supply chain and performance management. With more than 2,500 mid- to large-sized corporate customers, and sales of its healthcare solutions growing at 163 percent, Lawson has distinguished itself competitively through a unique blend of feature-rich customer solutions, technology innovation and user-friendly support. Lawson Software has been acclaimed by technology analysts for its innovative and unique use of leading-edge technologies, like Self-Evident Applications (SEA) on the Web, and Drill Around for integrated, cross-application data access.
Red Herring magazine names Lawson "the strongest private ERP company" and lists Lawson among the world's top 50 private companies. The Information Technology Association of America asserts Lawson is the first to be certified for Year 2000 compliance. Says the Meta Group, "Lawson gives its customers quantified savings by aiming their technology at saving corporations on overhead ... a rare thing in the client/server world." Offering LAWSON INSIGHT for UNIX, NT and AS/400 platforms, Lawson has offices in 15 countries, more than 20 distributors worldwide and a 96 percent client retention over five years. The company is headquartered in Minneapolis and London. Additional information about Lawson Software is available on the company's Web site, http://www.lawson.com or by calling (800) 477-1357.