Ace Hardware Corp. has purchased MicroStrategy Inc.’s Business Intelligence Platform, a data analysis program, and will integrate it with its 1-terabyte-sized data warehouse. The resulting information will aid in pricing, marketing and loyalty club promotions.
Oak Brook, IL-based Ace adds half a gigabyte of information – roughly 1 million consumer records – to its data warehouse every day, according to Brian Smetana, Ace’s senior business analyst. The retailer collects data through its Helpful Hardware Club loyalty program, which boasts more than 2 million members.
“The Helpful Hardware Club helped us get the data warehouse off the ground,” Smetana said. “All of its programs are based off point of sale data.” Ace had been doing smaller-scale analytics since the mid-1990s, and began its review for a system it could scale across the entire company in mid-1999.
While Smetana did not comment on the total cost of the contract, roughly 1,000 of its 5,200 outlets use the new program.
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