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Family Dollar uses SAS merchandise planning to accelerate its company-wide transformation


WEBWIRE

SAS® Merchandise Financial Planning, SAS® Assortment Planning help Family Dollar make better decisions quickly in challenging economy

NRF 98th Annual Convention and EXPO, NEW YORK . – Family Dollar, a Fortune 500 retailer with more than 6,600 stores and $6.8 billion in annual revenues, is in the midst of “Project Accelerate,” a three-year transformation that ultimately will lead to a better shopping experience for customers, improved productivity of its inventory, and enhanced efficiency in its supply chain. At the heart of Family Dollar’s transformation are merchandise planning applications from SAS, the leader in business analytics.

“We view our relationship with SAS as one of our most strategic partnerships,” said Mike Laurenti, Vice President of IT Solutions and Delivery for Family Dollar. “We made a conscious decision to work only with best-in-class companies as we began transforming Family Dollar. SAS is the leader in this space, and their applications are key to helping Family Dollar achieve success in our key initiatives.”

To power Project Accelerate, Family Dollar invested in software from the SAS® Merchandise Intelligence suite including SAS® Merchandise Financial Planning and SAS® Merchandise Assortment Planning. More than 100 Family Dollar employees began using SAS Merchandise Financial Planning in August 2007. The retailer has initiated a roll out of SAS Merchandise Assortment Planning that will continue throughout 2009.

“SAS enables the Family Dollar merchandising organization to quickly create integrated merchandise financial plans we can share and adjust collaboratively on an almost real-time basis,” said Scott Zucker, Vice President of Merchandise Operations for Family Dollar.

“With the current economy, it is important for us to make inventory adjustments quickly to minimize ‘discretionary’ risk and maximize ‘basic needs’ opportunities,” said Zucker. “During 2008, the SAS Merchandise Financial Planning solution enabled us to adjust our merchandise assortments much more quickly than in the past. This allowed us to make immediate investments in the consumable categories that our customers need most during these difficult times. Our strong fourth quarter results from June to August in 2008 reflect this mix shift away from more discretionary merchandise.”

To nimbly leverage the eight terabytes of data underpinning Family Dollar’s transformation, the retailer chose to deploy the applications on a powerful Windows 64-bit platform with a distributed architecture. The platform provides Family Dollar with needed flexibility and scalability combined with significantly reduced overall deployment costs.

In addition to Family Dollar, SAS retail customers include AutoZone, Bakers Footwear, Brooks Brothers, Burger King, Cabela’s, Carrefour, Casino, Casual Male, The Children’s Place, Eddie Bauer, Hallmark, Hudson’s Bay Company, JCPenney, Kohl’s, Luxottica Retail, Macy’s, Mark’s Work Wearhouse, Marks & Spencer, Northern Tool & Equipment, Office Depot, Sainsbury’s, ShopKo, Sport Chalet, Spiegel Brands, Staples, Tesco, Tween Brands, Waitrose, Williams-Sonoma and 1-800-FLOWERS.COM.

To learn more about Family Dollar’s transformation, attend the NRF Big Ideas Session led by Scott Zucker on Monday, Jan. 12, starting at 1:45 p.m. (Eastern) in Room No. 3D08 in the Javits Convention Center in New York City.

For more information about SAS® Retail Intelligence Solutions, visit http://www.sas.com/industry/retail/. SAS is demonstrating its retail intelligence solutions at the NRF 98th Annual Show and EXPO in Booth 1337.



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