Applications of data warehousing and data mining in the retail industry

The information economy puts a premium on high quality actionable information - exactly what Business Intelligence (BI) tools like data warehousing, data mining, and OLAP can provide to the retailers. A close look at the different retail organizational functions suggests that BI can play a crucial role in almost every function. It can give new and often surprising insights about customer behavior; thereby helping the retailers meet their ever-changing needs and desires. On the supply side, BI can help retailers identify their best vendors and determine what separates them from not so good vendors. It can give retailers better understanding of inventory and its movement and also help improve storefront operations through better category management. Through a host of analyses and reports, BI can also improve retailers' internal organizational support functions like finance and human resource management.