BRdata Cloud Vendor Portal and Scan Promotion Tracking

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BRdata Cloud continues its rapid growth with two new major offerings: Cloud Vendor Portal and Scan Promotion Tracking.  Grocery retailers and wholesalers can now add seamless communications to their Master Data Management (MDM) systems by allowing their vendors and brokers to upload item, cost, and promotional information to BRdata Cloud Vendor Portal.  Vendors like this solution because their single uploads can support hundreds of stores depending on the region. Through this platform, all parties can potentially reduce costs and increase efficiencies.  These systems will undoubtedly integrate into existing BRdata databases effortlessly, however, using BRdata in the Store or HQ is not a requirement to utilize the Cloud Vendor portal. 

Affiliated Foods Inc, based out of Amarillo, is implementing BRdata Cloud to track scan-based promotions throughout their 428-store co-operative.  Through Scan Promotion Tracking, BRdata Cloud processes the transaction log data from the stores to track the number of times promotional items were purchased.  At the end of the promotion, BRdata Cloud generates invoices for the vendors and brokers, in addition to providing the necessary data feeds for validation.   

BRdata World is a little more than twelve weeks away.  We’re excited to report that the attendee registration is more than double the pace of last year’s conference and as a result, the conference hotel is filling up quickly.  If you plan on attending, please register soon to ensure your spot at the event hotel.

Please email sales@brdata.com if you would like more information on BRdata Cloud Vendor Portal or Scan Promotion Tracking.

As always thank you for choosing BRdata for your retail technology needs and for your continued support.  

Sincerely,
John Abbene
President
BRdata | johna@brdata.com

E-commerce, Inventory, and Cloud App

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One of the many advantages for BRdata e-commerce retailers is the ability to track inventory to reduce consumer frustration caused by out-of-stocks. Version 8.09 of BRdata Enterprise Host and Store includes the ability to track inventory back to a master UPC. For example, we may sell several UPCs for strawberries or blueberries, but all we’re concerned about is the total amount sold and available inventory – whether in the store or online. With this new feature, it does not matter how many UPCs are linked to the item when all purchasing and sales link back to the master item for reporting and inventory.

Many retailers are implementing e-commerce solutions, but with high subscription and transaction fees, are these sales profitable?  The good news is that cost-effective e-commerce sales are within reach.  For anyone who has not seen our vastly enhanced e-commerce platform, I encourage them to look at the recent hour-long webinar at their leisure, which demonstrates all the new features and enhancements – the link to the webinar is in the knowledgebase.  Additionally, there are a few other ways to keep up with this fast-moving development.  Users can subscribe to our monthly e-commerce update email – which details all the enhancements, attend a focus group meeting – to suggest an enhancement, or simply schedule a demo.  Please contact Mike Abbene, at mikea@brdata.com, for more information on BRdata e-commerce, to subscribe to the newsletter or focus group, or for credentials to test-drive the demo site. 

BRdata Cloud App users now have date-driven store and department sales comparison dashboards available at their fingertips.  Grocery retail executives, directors, and managers rely on this app daily to quickly identify growth and decline within the store.  Cloud users can simply download this app from the App Store or Google Play and login using their existing credentials.

Sincerely,

John Abbene
President
BRdata | johna@brdata.com

BRdata E-commerce Webinar / Transaction Analyzer

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As the number of retailers offering e-commerce expands exponentially to match the growing customer demand, having an e-commerce site is now a necessity to remain competitive in this already competitive market.  Unfortunately, the per transaction, additional labor, and high annual fees of some of the leading platforms are making e-commerce an unprofitable venture for most.  For those of you who do not know, BRdata offers an easy-to-use, affordable solution, which is seamlessly integrated to your existing data.  Please join us on May 15, at 2:00 pm ET, as we are hosting a webinar for anyone who would like to learn how to leverage BRdata E-Commerce to quickly be a part of the online grocery shopping movement, while maintaining your margins.  Our reasonably priced, transaction fee free solution offers a sleek customer facing website with a robust site management platform (order management, picking, and site customization).  Please email Mike Abbene, at mikea@brdata.com, if you’re interested in attending the webinar.

BRdata Cloud users can now easily drill-down to a specific store in their enterprise to analyze basket transactions.  An optimized search is provided to identify the queried transactions, utilizing several filters – such as date, time, tender, cashier, register, UPC, and transaction amount.  Check out this month’s feature spotlight to learn more about this powerful query utility.

As always thank you for choosing BRdata for your retail technology needs and for your continued support. 

Sincerely,

John Abbene
President
BRdata | johna@brdata.com

Conference Early Registration Extended / Cloud Additions

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The initial conference session agenda has been established.  Once it’s approved by the user group board of directors, BRdata will begin the “calling all speakers” process to assign the user experience case studies.  Please contact me if you’re interested in presenting one of the planned case studies.  In anticipation of another conference attendance record and partner participation, we have extended the early registration rate two weeks.

There are three noteworthy recent additions to BRdata Cloud.  The basket analysis reporting now has an Affinity Analysis report.  This utility allows you to track which items commonly sell with specific UPC.  Merchandisers and marketers can use this report for promoting sales through UPC likeness.  For example, when processing the report for hummus, it will indicate which items most often sold with the inquired UPC.  Additionally, the customer loyalty reports were enhanced to select quartiles of customers, indicating group ranking by customer.  Time is traditionally spent targeting the top 25% of customers in the first quartile, but the second, third, and fourth quartile can also use some attention.  This feature will quickly identify the desired customers to be queried.  We also added a transaction lookup report in the loss prevention section, which enables you to query for transactions that meet one or multiple criteria.  You can then drill down to see the details of each of the transactions.

Lastly, those of you who are familiar with the reporting from BRdata Profit Analyzer should be happy to learn that by popular demand, this functionality will soon be available in BRdata Cloud.  The groundwork has been completed to present the drill-down of store, department, category, sub-category, and item views of sales and profits.  These customary Profit Analyzer analytics will be accessible in web-based reports and dashboards – stay tuned.

As always thank you for choosing BRdata for your retail technology needs and for your continued support. 

Sincerely,

John Abbene
President
BRdata | johna@brdata.com

BRdata World 2018 Registration is Open

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BRdata is pleased to announce that registration is now open for our next user’s conference, a three-day event occurring September 23-25, 2018. We are also excited to be moving the conference to a new location – The Fox Hollow, which is an exclusive Long Island conference facility, located in Woodbury, NY.

Business and IT professionals from our user group community gather each year at BRdata World to enhance their knowledge of BRdata enterprise technology, streamline complex processes, and respond to industry disruption. Attendees listen firsthand to success stories from leaders in the independent grocery industry. With more than twelve customer speakers, you’re guaranteed to gain significant insights, as they discuss best practices, while illuminating their journey to success. Hear inspiring keynotes from industry experts in marketing, digital technology, and governmental affairs affecting the grocery industry.

As technology progresses faster than ever, grocery retailers and wholesalers cannot afford to be left behind. You and your team need to stay ahead of the curve, so you can create, support, and advance the technology which gives your company a competitive edge. As more and more users adopt BRdata Cloud technology, they are thrilled about how they can effortlessly retrieve daily department sales comparisons and item movement query results from all stores in their enterprise, using an Apple or Android app. Releases are pushed every two weeks from our agile development department – ensure you are benefitting from everything that BRdata Cloud has to offer.

Learn how you can promote your brand, while increasing customer engagement, and loyalty with a consumer app in your chain or store to target your customers before, during, and after they shop. In today’s marketplace, it is imperative to implement an e-commerce solution to provide consumers the option to order groceries online for pickup or delivery, while mitigating the risks of lost sales to a growing number of competitors in the online grocery space. See how retailers have avoided integration issues and unwarranted high fees by choosing the BRdata e-commerce platform.

While at the conference, attendees can visit the Tech Pavilion, where you can experience the newest and most powerful technology from our partners and BRdata. We have a great lineup of extensive and interactive technical and product sessions, as well as fun events for you to take advantage of the invaluable networking with your peers.

As always thank you for choosing BRdata for your retail technology needs and for your continued support.

Sincerely,

John Abbene
President
BRdata | johna@brdata.com

Top Six Trends For Independent Grocers In 2018

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by Adam Abbene, Sales Manager, BRdata

In today’s hyper-competitive grocery market, independent grocers need to utilize every tool and technology available to optimize every aspect of their operation. In the months ahead, that means independent grocers will rely more than ever on cloud-based systems to enhance and complement their capabilities in customer service, inventory management, data analysis and more.

Real-time, cloud-based consumer data and store analytics can help owners and managers of independent grocers make informed decisions quickly by making it easier and more convenient than ever to recognize and react to insights related to practically every aspect of the store.

Here are six trends that are among the reasons 2018 is the year of the cloud for independent grocers.

Read more here

Save the Date – BRdata World 2018 – September 23-25

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It’s a new year, which brings planning for our next user’s conference. We are set to open the conference registration within the next 45 days, but want to give our attendees and business partners as much advanced notice on the dates as possible. BRdata World 2018, our 11th annual user’s conference, will once again be in New York, on Long Island. As our cloud, app, e-commerce, store, and enterprise solutions continue to rapidly expand, we will have another educational and networking packed agenda. And with the BRdata User Group community size at an all-time high, we expect this conference to be our most well attended to date.

The NGA trade show, at the Mirage in Las Vegas, is less than two weeks away. If you plan on attending, we hope to see you at our booth, or in attendance at our user group meeting on Monday, February 12th at 5:00 pm – after the show floor closes. Stop by our booth to test drive our solutions, including our revamped e-commerce platform, and for the user group meeting details.

As always thank you for choosing BRdata for your retail technology needs and for your continued support.

Sincerely,

John Abbene
President
BRdata | johna@brdata.com

Year in Review – Upcoming Trade Shows

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I hope everyone is enjoying a wonderful holiday season.  As 2017 ends, BRdata would like to reflect on this year’s accomplishments.  We are proud to report another record-breaking sales year, which includes a 20% growth in sales, and an increase in personnel to an all-time high.  We now offer a fully integrated e-commerce platform for retailers looking for a powerful, affordable, back-office data-driven, end to end solution.  We launched the BRdata Cloud app – which provides an enterprise sales dashboard and item movement views – and the BRdata Store app – which includes a meat grind-log solution, and is the basis for our transition from the store level Windows client application.  There were several enhancements added to the BRdata Cloud solution – including numerous new reports and features, enhanced customer loyalty, in-lane digital coupons for RORC point of sale, production planning, and automated report emailing.  There have also been two major releases to the BRdata enterprise suite – versions 8.07 and 8.08.

BRdata World 2017, our 10th annual user’s conference, was a well-attended success.  The feedback for the industry speakers, case studies, networking, and education was overwhelmingly positive.  We elected a new user group president and added several grocery industry veterans to the BRUG board of directors.

We have two big trade show events over the next two months.  We hope to have the opportunity to meet with you and demonstrate our new technologies, either at NRF in New York City, on January 14-16, or at NGA in Las Vegas, on February 11-14, 2018.  If you are attending NGA, please plan on joining us, and your peers, at a BRdata user group (BRUG) meeting on Monday, February 12th, at 5:00 pm, in the Mirage hotel.

Although this past year has been a great success, it could not have been possible without our dedicated BRdata family of associates, customers, and partners.

As always thank you for choosing BRdata for your retail technology needs and for your continued support.  Here’s to a Happy New Year from everyone at the BRdata family.  We look forward to a healthy, prosperous 2018 – and beyond.

Sincerely,
John Abbene
President
BRdata | johna@brdata.com

BRdata Store App Released / Cloud Analytics

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BRdata recently released the BRdata Store App for iOS.  The initial version includes our Meat Grind Log and Markdown cloud based solutions, in addition to access to our knowledge base video library.  The Meat Grind Log feature will empower retailers to easily launch a centralized grind log tracking solution – say goodbye to the inefficient and potentially inaccurate manual tracking.  I attended a retail technology meeting yesterday, where a grocery retailer reported that the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Services (FSIS) audited his store and were not satisfied with the manual paper tracking system he had implemented.  The BRdata Store App can quickly solve this issue.

Instead of putting a stock “amount off” tag or crossing out the barcode with a marker, the Markdown feature of the app provides a way for retailer’s to easily markdown products by printing a new barcode to a Zebra Wi-Fi or Bluetooth printer.  The new marked down price prints in the barcode and is placed over the original barcode.  Loss prevention audit reports are also provided.

The BRdata Store App requires login credentials to BRdata Cloud.  Upcoming features for the BRdata Store App are DSD receiving and price verification.

To better understand the needs of our cloud subscribers, we have started tracking report usage in BRdata Cloud.  These analytics will be provided in our bi-weekly cloud update emails.  For customers who are not receiving the BRdata Cloud update emails, the current top 5 cloud reports are:

  1. Item Movement
  2. Retail Department Sales
  3. Item Movement Totals
  4. Financial Store Totals
  5. Weekly Department Financials.

Please email us at sales@brdata.com or cloudsupport@brdata.com for more information on the BRdata Store App or BRdata Cloud.

As always thank you for choosing BRdata for your retail technology needs and for your continued support.  Happy Holidays from everyone at the BRdata family.

Sincerely,

John Abbene
President
BRdata | johna@brdata.com

Consumer Apps as a Tool to Build Customer Loyalty

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Michael Abbene, Product Specialist
November 14, 2017

Grocery shoppers have an abundance of choices these days. Not only can they select between stores in their immediate area, but now global online retailers will deliver right to their door. As an independent grocer, you’re in a great position to know your local customers’ needs better than most, but in an age where convenience is a key factor in consumer decision making, you need the tools to show current and new customers that you have the products, promotions and programs they value. And one of the most effective ways to do that is by engaging with them via the medium where they spend so much of their time—their personal smartphone and tablet. 

Recent data shows that 86 percent of time spent on personal mobile phones is spent using apps, compared to only 14 percent using a browser. If you’re relying on your website alone to share deals and offers, customers likely won’t see all your store has to offer. A consumer app is one way to give customers easy access to coupons, loyalty programs, discounts, promotions and more. Through an app, a platform like BRdata Connect can provide customers with useful store information and you with insightful analytical data. 

The app is customizable to your store’s needs with an easily navigable branded homepage and menu, email and push notifications on upcoming deals, coupon clipping abilities, store locator, reward redemption, recipes, weekly ads and more. Plus, through BRdata Connect, BRdata can access and compile user data to provide meaningful consumer insights, helping you tailor your products, offers, service and app functionality to your loyal customers.  

The choices of busy consumers are often guided by convenience. Adding an app to your store’s arsenal can mean the difference for a busy mom who doesn’t have time to physically cut coupons or a young professional looking for an easy dinner recipe and the ingredients to make it. Plus, with the behind-the-scenes data you’ll know which features are truly making a difference in maintaining customer loyalty.