MYDIN Mohamed Holdings Berhad of Malaysia (MYDIN) has selected Microsoft Dynamics AX for Retail and Microsoft Office Share Point Server 2007 for its reporting and dashboards.

The retailer also chose Profitbase Studio for its data warehouse and OLAP cubes to support its ambitious online growth plans for 2010 as better, near-real-time information is needed to support triple the number of stores in 2010.

MYDIN is implementing Microsoft Dynamics AX for Retail to drive major operational improvements by automating and integrating critical retail processes from stores to supply chain. This will also enable centralised management of retail stores with near-real-time information, which will prepare the company for its planned business growth.

The retailer decided on Profitbase 2009 to consolidate data from two enterprise resource planning and two point-of-sale systems because of the easy-to-use development environment and the ready-to-use OLAP cube templates for retail that support the ARTS data standard.

MYDIN is deploying Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to provide all levels of the organisation and its suppliers with information. Dashboards and scorecards, which will have standard financial and retail KPIs, will be deployed for everyone from the board of directors and executive management to central merchandisers, branch operations managers and suppliers. In addition, analysis capability will be provided for robust data mining and ad hoc analysis.

“With the Profitbase-Microsoft BI solution, we expect to have better visibility of our top-selling products, allowing us to make sure adequate store inventory levels are maintained,” said Malik Murad Ali, IT director for MYDIN. “We will also share product inventory levels with our suppliers so they can better service our stores. Overall, with better visibility and the resulting optimisation and proactive decision-making, we expect a positive impact to the bottom line of at least 5 per cent.”

“MYDIN demonstrates how retailers today can use IT to prepare for growth in this challenging economic environment,” said Brendan O’Meara, managing director for the Worldwide Retail Industry group at Microsoft. “The innovative use of IT can enable retailers to dramatically reduce costs, attract and retain customers, and accelerate business growth to gain competitive advantage. Through delivery of better-connected shopping experiences, online retailers such as MYDIN can enhance their brand and cement customer loyalty by adding tangible value in today’s environment, in which customers are increasingly in control.”