Hudson’s Bay Company Taps QuantiSense to Improve Retail Analytics, Transition to Cost Method of Inventory Accounting

QuantiSense to support Canada’s largest diversified retailer with analytics for greater management and consistent, action-oriented reporting across its retail banners

ATLANTA, November 10, 2009 – QuantiSense today announced that Hudson’s Bay Company has selected its retail analytics and business intelligence application to help standardize the company’s enterprise-wide approach to inventory accounting. Hudson’s Bay Company is Canada’s largest diversified general merchandise retailer with more than 600 retail locations across the country under the banners Zellers, the Bay, Home Outfitters, and Fields. The company’s North American parent company, Hudson’s Bay Trading Company (HBTC), also owns and operates Lord & Taylor, the well-known department store located in fine malls across the United States.

The QuantiSense solution will source data from Hudson’s Bay Company’s existing Teradata data warehouse, which serves more than 4,000 users, as well as from Retek and SAS’s planning solution. “We were looking for an exception-driven merchant reporting and analysis tool that would leverage our existing technology stack and investment without replicating underlying data,” said Thomas Schuetz, VP of IT Development and Support for Hudson’s Bay Company.

Hudson’s Bay Company will adopt QuantiSense Playbooks® with uniform analytics, consistent metrics and role-based dashboards across all its banners, creating standards for more effective reporting. The project will leverage QuantiSense’s best practices library to avoid disruption as Hudson’s Bay Company migrates from multiple versions of the retail method of inventory accounting to the weighted cost method, part of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for Canadian retailers being introduced in 2011.

QuantiSense Playbooks will help guide users within well-defined roles and responsibilities to be responsive to specific situations, so as they receive feedback from their actions, they have the opportunity to make more effective decisions. Playbooks will also support Hudson’s Bay Company when addressing decisions such as reducing stockouts, minimizing overstocks, taking smarter markdowns, and accelerating or cancelling orders.

“With QuantiSense, we are looking to create efficiencies and standardize our analytics processes across each of our retail entities, while still leveraging our existing investments,” said Dan Smith, CIO, Hudson’s Bay Company. “We believe QuantiSense brings the retail experience and strong integration capabilities to help us effectively enhance our analytic processes.”

“Hudson’s Bay Company is a leader in data warehousing for the retail industry by many measures,” noted Jeff Buck, CEO, QuantiSense. “We are pleased to help integrate their retail businesses while leveraging their existing technology infrastructure.”

About Hudson’s Bay Company

Hudson’s Bay Company, the Canadian retail entity of Hudson’s Bay Trading Company (HBTC), is Canada’s largest diversified general merchandise retailer. Founded in 1670, The Hudson’s Bay Company operates the Bay, a major department store, Zellers, a mass merchandise format, Home Outfitters, a kitchen, bed and bath specialty store, and value-priced Fields stores. With more than 600 retail outlets and over 60,000 associates in Canada, Hudson’s Bay Company banners provide Canadians with stylish, quality merchandise at great value and with a dedicated focus on exceeding customer expectations. http://www.hbc.com/