Chicago, Ill. -- Rite-Aid, a $5.5 billion drug store retailer with more than 2,700 stores, has selected Intrepid System's DecisionMaster Merchandising Workbench utilizing MicroStrategy's ROLAP engine. During the next month, Rite-Aid plans to roll out DecisionMaster to their internal business partners which include category managers and analysts in purchasing, merchandising, and marketing. Rite-Aid is using DecisionMaster to "Make sure we have the right products in the right stores at the right time," said Don Fogal, director of information systems. Rite-Aid is also using DecisionMaster to evaluate promotion effectiveness. "For example, we are monitoring the performance of ad items before, during, and after a promotion. Having access to this information allows analysts to answer questions such as 'What advertising medium was the most effective during the promotion?' This allows us to immediately adjust our advertising/merchandising strategy to improve our bottom line." "MicroStrategy's ROLAP engine will enable Rite-Aid to perform sophisticated analysis that they had not been able to do in the past," said Sanju Bansal, MicroStrategy's chief operating officer. "MicroStrategy's ROLAP engine allows Rite-Aid to perform complex multidimensional analysis of their business using basket profitability comparisons, rankings, and inventory metrics. With DecisionMaster and MicroStrategy's ROLAP engine, Rite-Aid can create advanced OLAP calculations such as this period/last period comparisons, margin analysis, and percent of plan to help make informed decisions about their business."
Rite-Aid Selects MicroStrategy and Intrepid for ROLAP
October 4, 1996