The Parable Group, provider of marketing services and real-time information and analytics, announced June 24 an agreement to provide analytics and enhanced insight for CBA and its members.

Under this agreement, Parable will provide CBA members and CROSS:SCAN reporting stores with enhanced analytics through the ParableConnect data platform. This base-level data partnership will deliver many benefits to CBA member stores for free, enabling them to seamlessly store and process real-time transactional data in order to achieve rich insights, drive operational efficiencies and increase revenue opportunities.

“CROSS:SCAN has served stores well for years. We are excited that CBA asked us to improve its capabilities and provide their users with compelling and actionable analytics,” said Erik Ernstrom, manager of business intelligence for The Parable Group. “Users will enjoy expanded functionality on CROSS:SCAN, powered by our data platform, which will provide the opportunity to run best-sellers reports by quantity sold, by dollars, by receipt count and allow filtering by product type and category, region, vendor and more.”

The Parable Group has been collecting consumer and transactional data for over 15 years, and currently powers data services for retailers affiliated with various marketing groups while safeguarding and protecting the integrity of every retailer’s individual data. Data partners transmit data, such as point-of-sale and inventory data to The Parable Group, which transforms the data into actionable insights accessed on their user-friendly data platform—ParableConnect—helping retailers improve inventory selection, drive more transactions, increase sales and optimize their marketing spend.

Through this partnership, CBA members and CROSS:SCAN reporting stores will receive enhanced analytics with zero expense, but can choose to upgrade to a full-level data plan to have unlimited data access and reporting, including promotion analytics, response analysis, inventory and transaction comparisons, post-sale credit reporting, live customer data and predictive mailing. Full-level data partner stores also can pull a mailing list of customers who are likely to respond to a promotion.

“Easily accessible and visible data will help our industry better understand customer trends, adapt to their needs and project need more effectively and profitably,” CBA President Curtis Riskey said. “It will be especially important as retailers try new strategies and need to monitor results in a dynamic retailing marketplace.”

Riskey said he is confident that security barriers and legal protections are in place to protect retailer data from being shared with competitive channels and other retail groups and companies.

“It’s hard to manage what you can’t measure,” Steve Potratz, president of The Parable Group, said. “We commend CBA for their commitment to the Christian retail community and for recognizing the value in providing rich insights to its members. We are excited to see how this partnership brings the industry together as a whole while providing new insight and success to individual stores.”

CBA is requesting existing CROSS:SCAN reporting companies to connect with Parable to renew data security and operational agreements. CBA Service Corp., a separate company, will be involved in providing enhanced services to suppliers offering data reports and analysis for Christian-retail channel use and application.

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