Ace Hardware Selects BA Insight to Power Next-Generation Search Solution
BA Insight’s Knowledge Integration Platform to Transform Information Access for More Than 4,700 Ace Hardware Stores
BOSTON, Mass. – March 10, 2015– BA Insight announced that Ace Hardware selected its Knowledge Integration Platform to power its next-generation ACENET, a search-driven intranet portal serving independent retailers and employees nationwide. Unified product and content search improves store efficiency, maximizes upsell opportunities and improves customer satisfaction.
The new ACENET, already running in over 3,000 stores, uses the BA Insight Knowledge Integration Platform along with SharePoint 2013 to drive more precise, accurate, and complete search results. Ace Hardware store owners and staff can use a single interface to quickly access product information, real-time inventory, pricing data, and corporate information. The solution surfaces targeted content based on the user’s geographic location, specific store attributes, and unique search preferences. ACENET is being deployed across the company’s 4,700 independently-owned stores.
“Access to relevant product and inventory information is the lifeline for Ace retailers, and our search has to be the best out there,” stated Scott Heyer, Ace Hardware’s Manager – Store Systems. “BA Insight was a unique choice because of its comprehensive product capabilities and deep expertise with SharePoint and search. ACENET takes advantage of the new Web Content Management (WCM) and search capabilities in SharePoint 2013, brought to life by BA Insight. The new platform has a friendly user interface, great navigation, and an easy-to-use product comparison and shopping cart, allowing us to extend new cross-selling opportunities to Ace retailers.”
“Retail organizations such as Ace Hardware rely on quick and easy access to actionable information to drive sales and customer satisfaction. Ace Hardware’s new search-driven application will help its franchises be more efficient, serve their customers better, and increase revenue,” said Massood Zarrabian, Chief Executive Officer of BA Insight. “We are thrilled that Ace Hardware chose our platform and expertise to rapidly create their next-generation ACENET.”
About Ace Hardware
For 90 years, Ace Hardware has been known as the place with the helpful hardware folks in thousands of neighborhoods across America, providing customers with a more personal kind of helpful. In 2013, Ace ranked “Highest in Customer Satisfaction with Home Improvement Retail Stores, Seven Years in a Row” according to J.D. Power. With more than 4,700 hardware stores locally owned and operated across the globe, Ace is the largest hardware cooperative in the industry. Headquartered in Oak Brook, Ill., Ace and its subsidiaries currently operate 14 distribution centers in the U.S. and also have distribution capabilities in Shanghai, China; Panama City, Panama; and Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Its retailers’ stores are located in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and approximately 60 countries. For more information on Ace, visit www.acehardware.com.
About BA Insight
As an innovator in the Cognitive Search Market, BA Insight’s best of breed approach helps companies make search intelligent by providing technology that connects machine learning, cognitive computing, and enterprise systems, powering a new generation of intranets and cognitive search solutions. Our customers have the freedom to leverage the best search engines and cognitive computing capabilities available, providing users with an internet-like search experience while saving them precious time looking for needed information. We support multiple search platforms including Azure Search; Elasticsearch and Elastic Cloud; and SharePoint search (online, on-prem, and hybrid).
Our modular software product portfolio features SmartHub, delivering a personalized, internet-like user experience; connectors, providing secure connectivity to a wide variety of systems; classification, increasing findability using auto-tagging, text analytics, and metadata generation; and analytics, providing valuable data to make intelligent decisions about your intranet.
Hundreds of organizations and over 3.5 million users benefit from BA Insight’s software on a daily basis to provide compelling intranets that people love to use. This includes respected organizations such as the Australian Government Department of Defence, CA Technologies, Chevron, DLA Piper, Keurig Green Mountain, Mars, Pepsi, Pfizer, and Travers Smith. BA Insight is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, a member of the Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Alliance, and an Elastic Partner.
Visit www.BAinsight.com for more information and follow us at @BAinsight.
Media Contact:
Debbie Ferolito
BA Insight
339.933.4060
dferolito@BAinsight.com