MSDN Industry Center - Retail

For those of you who are not familiar with PIM, let us apologize in advance for cluttering your mind with yet another acronym. Product Information Management, or PIM, refers to the systems, strategies, and processes to manage product data. Although the concepts of PIM are certainly nothing new, retailers are now addressing their PIM needs in the context of their multichannel strategy. The nature of what PIM provides means that many retailers see PIM as a precursor or dependency in their broader E-commerce solution initiatives.

To stay competitive, retailers must understand not only current consumer behavior, but must also be able to predict future consumer behavior. Accurate prediction and an understanding of customer behavior can help retailers keep customers, improve sales, and extend the relationship with their customers. SQL Server 2008 offers predictive analysis through data mining, empowering users with actionable insight across the organization. SQL Server 2008 and Microsoft Office Excel 2007 offer data mining capabilities that can help retailers make informed decisions. This white paper explores examples that include churn analysis to estimate the number of customers in danger of being lost, market analysis to show how customers are distributed between high and low value segments, and market basket analysis to determine those products that customers are more likely to buy together.

You will find on this information center, a reference application pack of an OBA for supply chain management (SCM), which covers various collaboration scenarios across organizational boundaries. The reference application pack provides details on architecture, development model and what the end user experience will be like.

Have you ever thought what would happen if railway tracks, car tires, and power sockets were all different sizes? It would be a chaotic world, one in which nothing functioned and life came to a standstill. This is where standardization helps.