Discussions play an important part in Jonathan Golovin’s day. The CEO of Retail Solutions Inc., makes it a point to sit along with his team members and hear their opinions on the advent of cloud into the retail sector. “I’ve learned that open discussion is a cornerstone of life—it allows for a variety and richness of opinions and insights to be shared and heard. I try to run the business on similar grounds and ask team members for feedback throughout projects and as we strategize for the future. Given the major drift in the retail sector, only through this sharing of the team’s experiences and views of the customer, can we help meet their objectives,” says Golovin.

According to Golovin, each year, the retail sector loses $100’s of billions in revenue globally to addressable retail execution issues like out-of-stocks. Coupled with a lack of collaboration and absence of real-time, accurate data sharing across the value chain, this has resulted in an industry that struggles with multiple execution issues such as phantom inventory levels, out-of-stocks and promotional errors. To tackle the situation, RSi provides cloud-based Big Data analytics and real-time intelligence for consumer goods manufacturers and their retailer partners. Its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) data platform integrates with both internal and external systems such as enterprise resource planning, daily POS and inventory data to capture near real-time demand signals to drive mission critical operational systems including vendormanaged inventory software, to enhance planning.

“We are living in a digital era where consumers have round-the-clock access to prices and product availability at their fingertips. CIO’s have to figure out how to work with the flood of potential data sources and utilize the information, to make it relevant and sharable across multiple systems, accessible securely via userfriendly tools,” adds Golovin.

RSi’s cloud-based solutions bring together retailers, their data, their suppliers and their customers. “We offer the end-user a variety of tools that allow them to leverage the data and visualize it – making it easy to act, share and report. Retailers pass on their Point-Of-Sale (POS) data to RSi, whose platform then collects, loads, cleanses and harmonizes billions of data points each day and provides it to brands via a suite of applications designed to better understand what products are selling, where and why.