Rite-Aid Selects MicroStrategy and Intrepid Systems to Deliver Merchandising Management Decision Support Solution; Application Allows for Category Management Analysis

Business Wire, Sept 30, 1996

RISCON '96--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 30, 1996--MicroStrategy, the largest relational on-line analytical processing (ROLAP) vendor and Intrepid Systems, the leading provider of integrated transaction and decision support systems today announced that Rite-Aid, a $5.5 billion drug store retailer with more than 2,700 stores, has selected Intrepid's DecisionMaster (Merchandising Workbench utilizing MicroStrategy's ROLAP engine.

During the next month, Rite-Aid plans to roll out DecisionMaster to their internal 'business partners' which include category managers and analysts in purchasing, merchandising, and marketing. Rite-Aid is using DecisionMaster to "Make sure we have the right products in the right stores at the right time," said Don Fogal, director of information systems. "We needed a solution that would allow our business partners to quickly and easily get answers to their questions and make informed business decisions."

Among the ways Rite-Aid is using DecisionMaster is to evaluate promotion effectiveness. "For example, we are monitoring the performance of ad items before, during, and after a promotion. Having access to this information allows analysts to answer questions such as 'What advertising medium was the most effective during the promotion?' This allows us to immediately adjust our advertising/merchandising strategy to improve our bottom line."

Rite-Aid is also using the solution to make marketing decisions for future promotions based on past ad performance. "We are excited that Rite-Aid has selected the MicroStrategy/Intrepid solution to fulfill its decision support needs," said Jim Kelly, vice president of sales from Intrepid Systems. "By implementing Intrepid's pre-defined set of merchandising reports, Rite-Aid was able to rapidly satisfy their users reporting needs without requiring additional investments in expensive and often lengthy customized development efforts."

Fogal also added that the other key reason that Rite-Aid selected the solution was because of the powerful benefits provided by the combined MicroStrategy/Intrepid offering. "DecisionMaster's user-friendly graphical interface combined with the very solid MicroStrategy ROLAP technology offered a great solution in one package," said Fogal.

"MicroStrategy's ROLAP engine will enable Rite-Aid to perform sophisticated analysis that they had not been able to do in the past," said Sanju Bansal, MicroStrategy's chief operating officer. "MicroStrategy's ROLAP engine allows Rite-Aid to perform complex multidimensional analysis of their business using basket profitability comparisons, rankings, and inventory metrics. With DecisionMaster and MicroStrategy's ROLAP engine, Rite-Aid can create advanced OLAP calculations such as this period/last period comparisons, margin analysis, and percent of plan to help make informed decisions about their business."

About DecisionMaster

DecisionMaster is a suite of pre-built, integrated decision support workbench applications that utilize Intrepid's retail data model or a customers existing data model, and a retail data warehouse. DecisionMaster supports every major functional area of retailing, including Merchandising, Store Operations, Finance and Marketing. The DecisionMaster workbench applications not only provide easy access to information for executives, but unrivaled access to information by business users, supporting extensive reporting and on-line analysis in a graphical environment.

About Intrepid

Intrepid Systems is the retail industry' s leading provider of integrated merchandise management and decision support software systems. The company serves medium and large size retailers in all segments of the industry. Intrepid's customer list includes: Consolidated Stores, Casual Corner Group, Crown Books, Federated Department Stores, Montgomery Ward and Food Lion. Based in Alameda, CA the company also has offices in Cincinnati, Chicago, New York and Sarasota, FL. More information about Intrepid can be found by visiting our web site at http://www.intrepidsys.com or by calling 510-769-4888.

About MicroStrategy

MicroStrategy is the leading provider of industrial-strength decision support products for developing and accessing data warehouses. As the Relational OLAP (ROLAP) industry pioneer, MicroStrategy was the first vendor to deliver high-performance, multidimensional OLAP analysis directly from relational databases without requiring any proprietary multidimensional databases. In addition, MicroStrategy has engineered many data warehousing breakthroughs: intelligent agents; VLDB drivers for terabyte-range scalability; a dynamic, multi-pass SQL generation engine; DSS metadata CASE tools; a VLDB-savvy OLAP report writer; a mission-critical ROLAP server; and most recently, OLAP over the world wide web.

MicroStrategy's worldwide customer base includes industry leaders like Kmart, MCI, CVS, Glaxo Wellcome, Federated Department Stores, Bank of America, AT&T, USAA, Sara Lee Direct, Victoria's Secret, and Hallmark.