The collaboration with industry to develop business analytics shared services for the retail and wholesale sectors was announced by IDA's Chief Executive Officer Mr Ronnie Tay at the Business Analytics Seminar.

Business analytics is becoming a key competitive differentiator for companies and organisations. It enables businesses to analyse the vast amounts of data that they have accumulated over time, in order to discover greater insights about their customers and operations. This allows them to make data-driven, informed decisions to improve service levels, minimise inventory holdings and increase overall operational efficiency.

To facilitate the adoption of analytics applications in the retail and wholesale sectors, Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) and its industry partners will be investing a total of S$5.3 million to develop a suite of shared services to enhance capabilities in Customer and Marketing Analytics, Inventory Optimisation and Operations Analytics. The aim is to help businesses lower the cost of adopting business analytics, shorten the implementation time and make analytics services available on demand.

Retailers and wholesalers that adopt business analytics are expected to derive benefits for their front-end store operations and back-end processes. Retailers can benefit from better understanding of customers’ preferences, purchase patterns and effectiveness of marketing and promotional campaigns. At the back-end, benefits include stronger demand forecasting linking inventory level to product sales information thereby reducing inventory costs. Suppliers can also gain insights into various aspects of enterprise operations for effective allocation of manpower, material and other resources.

Besides the retail and wholesale sectors, IDA's initial efforts in business analytics adoption will also cover other sectors such as healthcare, insurance, and food and beverage. Data and analytics have been identified as a strategic focus area for IDA, which aims to develop Singapore into an international Data and Analytics Hub. This will be done through an integrated approach that involves seeding adoption, developing industry and manpower capabilities and putting in place a scalable infrastructure.

At IDA’s Business Analytics Seminar and Exhibition on 31 May 2012, Mr Ronnie Tay, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of IDA, announced that three service providers have been selected through a Call-for-Collaboration (CFC) to provide analytics services for the retail and wholesale sectors. They will collaborate with user enterprises to create ready-to-use analytics applications for different retail segments spanning grocery, consumer electronics and departmental stores. Subsequently, more enterprises can benefit by subscribing to these analytics applications, which are expected to be rolled out from mid-2013.

Manthan Systems, a retail analytics solutions provider, is working with early adopters NTUC Fairprice, NTUC Link, NTUC Unity Healthcare and CK Tang to develop Customer and Marketing Analytics which will help organisations assess the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns and understand their customers' purchase pattern and trends.

“Being an early adopter of IDA's Sectoral Business Analytics Call-for-Collaboration enables us to work with other like-minded service and retail industry leaders and innovatively utilise sophisticated analytical tools to gain a deeper understanding of what our customers really want,” said Mr Seah Kian Peng, CEO (Singapore), NTUC Fairprice.

Service provider CyanSYS is partnering Best Denki to develop analytics services in Inventory Optimisation. “By leveraging on inventory optimisation, Best Denki will benefit from improved inventory visibility, and inventory management, resulting in greater operational efficiency and cost savings,” said Mr C J Raj, Managing Director, Best Denki (Singapore).

The third service provider, PracBiz, will enhance its business-to-business supply chain solutions to provide Operations Analytics shared services for suppliers. It is partnering YG Marketing, which represents brands such as Callaway, Van Heusen, Arnold Palmer, Daniel Hechter and Pierre Cardin in Singapore. “As a distributor of fashion apparel in Singapore, YG Marketing manages the distribution, replenishment and sales at various retail stores,” said Ms G H Lim, Financial Controller, YG Marketing.

Through its participation in IDA’s Sectoral Business Analytics initiative, the company hopes to benefit from cost savings, improved efficiency and increased productivity with the use of operations analytics. “Our vision is to be the market leader in all aspects of our trade, embracing technology and increasing our staff’s competencies to improve our operations,” said Ms Lim.