TEMPLE, Texas Convenience, mass and drug channel wholesaler McLane Co. Inc. has signed an agreement to provide shipment data to CStoreXchange (CSX LLC), operator of the largest database of financial and operating data for the convenience store and petroleum marketing industries. Under the agreement, McLane will provide CSX with national c-stores' shipment data by category, and CSX subscribers will be able to view these trends on CSX's 24/7 online database.
Providing retailers the combination of McLane's by-category shipments data on the same venue with [image-nocss] CSX's sales and operating trends provides CSX subscribers with significant analytical capabilities, the firm said. The scope and timeliness of the McLane data resident on the CSX database, combined with the CSX users ability to mine' this data to meet their needs, will increase the productivity of business analytics on product related decisions, while enhancing our industry's positioning in the marketplace overall, said Roger Grogman, vice president of marketing for McLane Grocery.
We are thrilled that McLane selected the CSX platform to publish their rich data, said Dick Meyer, co-founder and a partner in CSX. McLane has a long history of supporting the industry's thirst for important category management education. And we obviously cherish the fact that their research concluded that CSX is the right conduit for our mutual objectives. In our opinion, this is another strategic step that will allow c-store operators to attain more of a level playing field, data intelligence wise, versus competitive retail channels.
CSX expects to provide subscribers with McLane shipment trends as early as February 2007. The companies will provide initial previews of these enhanced business intelligence tools at the Convenience Retailing Conference in Phoenix in February, followed by the McLane National Trade Show in Las Vegas in March.
McLane provides distribution services throughout the United States, delivering food and nonfood products to more than 50,000 customer locations, including the convenience store, drug store, mass merchandise, quick-service restaurant and movie theater industries. Headquartered in Temple, Texas, the company operates 19 grocery distribution divisions and 18 foodservice distribution centers as well as an industry specific software company. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
CSX has the largest database of by-month financial and operating data of convenience store and petroleum marketing chains in the industry. Its retail and wholesale data populations represent data from approximately 200 chains. Participating CSX subscribers can view their dompany's performance on line and measure their trends against CSX's national and regional averages on a per-store per month and same firms' basis.
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