RPM Retail Ltd winner of the TUANZ Commerce Award

29 September, 2006

Last night at the TUANZ Innovation Awards RPM Retail Ltd was announced winner of the TUANZ Commerce Award. The awards are for products or services originating in New Zealand which place a premium on innovation, be it technical or commercial.

RPM is a world-first expert system for retailers which automates the creation and delivery of plain-English performance improvement advice via the internet.

ABOUT RPM

RPM is the world’s first expert system for retailers delivering on the long-held promise of artificial intelligence in business computing. By filtering, cleaning and consolidating massive amounts of point-of-sale data from every retail branch in a group, RPM makes better decisions than even the most expert human retailer, and it does this cost effectively via the Internet.

“It’s like having an expert retail consultant in every branch every day.”

The RPM software automates the creation and delivery of Action Bulletins™ - emails that contain data-driven specific advice for store managers and staff. Action Bulletins™ contain the most profit-impacting advice which can be readily implemented by busy store personnel. Feedback from branches automatically modifies the RPM rules engine so that advice becomes more personalised and meaningful.

RPM differentiates itself from existing business intelligence tools (which typically only empower a few head office analysts), by automatically sharing insights with those at the retail coal face. These people are not analysts and require specific, easily understood information which RPM provides via a simple web-based user interface with information only ever a few mouse-clicks away.

An intuitive RPM Index™ scoreboard produces a ‘balanced scorecard’ of each branch’s performance benchmarked against its peers. Even novice users can drill-down to detailed information with minimal mouse-clicks. The retailers’ data and the RPM application are housed on secure servers and accessed from any Internet browser – meaning that retail chains of any size can now access business intelligence to compete with the large discount chains, at a fraction of the cost of an enterprise BI system. Implementation is rapid (weeks not months), there are no infrastructure costs, and retailers do not require expert IT personnel to support or maintain it.

Retail chains using RPM can increase store profits by more than 20% in 12 months by improving staff performance, optimising inventory and more effectively meeting customer demand. RPM’s strategy is to provide the tool that improves collaboration between all parties in the retail value chain: store staff, head office personnel and suppliers. By aligning the efforts of these parties towards best-practice RPM becomes embedded at the centre of the retailers’ operations.

RPM was released in October 2005 and is currently used by over 200 retailers in five retail sectors in NZ (pharmacy, health stores, books & stationery, homeware and photo stores).

ENDS

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