Rebranded Intelligence Firm Aims for Convenience
Jul 21, 2010 1:28 PM, By Elaine Misonzhnik
Site selection and analytics technology firms are adapting to a world where immediacy is the new watch word. Today’s retail real estate executives don’t just expect to receive the right information to help them make important business decisions—thanks to recent advances in technology, they expect to receive that information the moment they ask for it, regardless of where they are. That’s part of the reason why Alteryx, a firm formerly known as SRC, has expanded its web service capabilities.
Alteryx delivers technology solutions and applications for data storage, retrieval, management, reporting and analysis of both spatial and conventional data. Previously, Alteryx’s core product, a business intelligence platform that allows clients to integrate their disparate databases to solve site selection and optimization challenges, was either installed on clients’ desktops or made available through a hosted service. Those options already allowed retailers to access relevant data quickly, according to Mark Zygmontowicz, senior vice president with Tango Management Consultants, a technology solutions provider that has been working with Clarks Shoes, an expanding footwear retailer.
“The Alteryx platform allows Clarks to call out the analysis of future sites for new store openings, so there are complicated calculations within that model that need to be completed, very, very rapidly,” Zygmontowicz says. “Alteryx allows those models to be executed very quickly to return a sales forecast for a new site.”
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This spring, however, the company unveiled software-as-a-service (SaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) capabilities in an effort to make its offerings more cost-effective and accessible. For instance, PaaS does away with the necessity for the client to buy a hardware and software package, instead making all of the product services available through the Web.
In addition, having access to Alteryx offerings through PaaS gives clients remote access to pertinent data and enables them to share that data with partners and customers, notes Alteryx CEO Dean Stoecker. For instance, if a mall’s leasing representative is having a meeting at a retailer’s headquarters and would like to show the retailer data or maps generated by Alteryx for site selection purposes, he can upload the retailer’s own customer and point of sale data over the Web to receive a custom analysis in real time.
“It saves the client the effort of having to build their own web infrastructure and eliminates a fairly big piece of the cost,” Stoecker says.
Alteryx now also offers its services through a browser-based application that can be accessed through mobile devices. The new capabilities come in the wake of the firm’s rebranding efforts, which included the name change to Alteryx from SRC that took place this March.
“What customers have come to know us for is the product called Alteryx,” says Stoecker. “So now it’s a single point of contact. It’s Alteryx.com, it’s Alteryx the product and it’s Alteryx the company.”
The firm, which for the past few years has been helping retail clients optimize existing portfolios has noticed a shift in focus toward overseas expansion in recent months. In addition, Stoecker says that retailers today are more likely to integrate real estate data to help make merchandising and marketing decisions.
In the first half of the year, Alteryx, which works with clients including Walmart, Best Buy and Dick’s Sporting Goods, has reported a 30 percent increase in total revenue.
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