GIANT EAGLE EXPANDS USE OF ITS INTRANET

LINDA PURPURA

PITTSBURGH -- Giant Eagle here is expanding the use of its intranet to include company documentation, such as technical and human resources information, among other areas. The chain's primary intranet use so far has been for providing access to point-of-sale information in its data warehouse.

Dave McGeary, retail technology adviser at Giant Eagle, said the chain launched its intranet within the past year, and that it is still exploring this area of its business. He emphasized Giant Eagle is in its very early stages of developing additional uses for the intranet.

"We continue to expand the use of the intranet and we're not certain where the end is," McGeary said.

McGeary explained the retailer's motivation for expanding the use of its intranet is rooted, in part, in the positive results it has experienced from using the intranet to access its data warehouse information to run sales reports and projections. POS data is retrieved from the front-end systems at its stores and pulled into the data warehouse.