RedPrairie to acquire StorePerform

RedPrairie Corporation and StorePerform Technologies, Inc. have signed a definitive agreement, whereby RedPrairie will acquire StorePerform Technologies, Inc, to become part of RedPrairies Retail Productivity Solutions division (formerly BlueCube Software).

With this acquisition, RedPrairie will now be in an even stronger position to meet expanding market demand for highly integrated workforce management solutions, integrating store execution management solutions with optimised labour scheduling, time and attendance, learning management, and employee self service solutions. StorePerform president Srikant Vasan will continue to provide business leadership for the StorePerform group out of Denver, CO, and no headcount reductions are planned due to the acquisition.
 
RedPrairie CEO John Jazwiec says: Through this acquisition, we are providing customers an end-to-end approach to Workforce Optimisation by marrying best-in-class BlueCube Workforce Management with StorePerform Store Execution Management solutions for a unified, end-to-end solution that optimises the retail workforce. With StorePerform, the leader in store execution management, we can further enable retailers to ensure that the right product and the right people are in the right place at the right time.
 
States Kim Eaton, RedPrairie president, Retail Productivity Solutions: We have led the industry by delivering optimised scheduling based on projected customer traffic and related sales. This workload typically represents two-thirds of the stores required labour. However, Store Execution Management also plays a vital role in optimising the workforce and, therefore, the retail environment. StorePerform allows retailers to schedule and track the remaining third - task-driven labour requirements, such as inventory resets, new displays, product recalls, etc. These task-driven requirements have dramatically increased in recent years with the advent of advanced price optimisation and merchandising solutions that create added workload for the store operation.  

She continues, True workforce optimisation requires a labour schedule that considers demand from traffic and task drivers. Combined with world-class time and attendance, workforce analytics and learning management, RedPrairies Retail Productivity suite now provides the kind of end-to-end workforce optimisation that retailers will leverage to outperform their competition. This integrated view of the retail operation pays dividends by reducing the costs of operating the business and providing the ability to maximise the performance of every store employee.
 
This is one of the more logical and beneficial retail software deals to have transpired in 2006, says Rob Garf, research director at AMR Research.[1] Combining workforce management and task management assets makes sense for RedPrairie, which now has an additional store operations product in its arsenal. It can use its installed base and marketing power to penetrate a relatively immature market. More importantly though, the deal makes sense for the retail community, which should find tremendous value from procuring these complementary systems from a single vendor. This acquisition proves that RedPrairie is serious about integrating data and processes between workforce and task management applications.
 
Vasan points out that, with RedPrairie, StorePerform will create an end-to-end workforce optimisation suite enabling retailers to manage their labour costs with an extremely accurate, real-time view into in-store operations and workloads, while also maintaining compliance with the corporate merchandising strategy required across the enterprise. We look forward to growing as part of RedPrairies Retail Productivity Solutions division to create important new capabilities for our customers and opportunities for our employees, he adds.
 
The agreement with StorePerform underscores the RedPrairie commitment to optimising retail operations by continued investment in its Retail Productivity Solutions business. StorePerform will unify and support its products and services in conjunction with the RedPrairies Retail Productivity solution suite. In addition, the acquisition is an important component of RedPrairies E2e (end-to-end) Consumer Driven Optimisation strategy, which drives value to every participant in the process by connecting the consumer with store operations, employee performance, distribution and manufacturing.
 
Says Jazwiec: Extending into store execution management is a natural evolution for RedPrairie. Even companies with the best retail and supply chain operations in the world still need to improve the critical last 20 yards, between the backroom and the sales floor.

About StorePerform Technologies, Inc.
StorePerform is the leader in store execution management software that bridges the gap between retailers sales strategy and program execution. StorePerforms proven technology is used by Best Buy, Lowes, Borders, Ross and other top retailers to quickly maximise store productivity and drive top-line revenue growth through better store execution. It shifts the retailers focus from managing solely by geography or format, and provides a view that allows them to focus on what high-performing stores are doing right and how to provide those learnings to the rest of the chain. It provides all levels of the organisationfrom corporate through to the storeswith the tools to combine better communication, execution and visibility into improved store performance.

About RedPrairie Corporation
RedPrairie is the worlds leading consumer driven optimisation company. Built on an advanced Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) developed over the past 10 years, the RedPrairie integrated suite of end-to-end (E2e) solutions offers on-demand capabilities to over 25,000 sites worldwide for many of the worlds largest companies. With 21 global service sites and standard service methods that have been validated over the last 30 years, RedPrairie provides unparalleled service and support.