DISCERN Insights-as-a-Service Platform Now Optimizes Retail Investment Decisions

SAN MATEO, CA--(Marketwired - May 11, 2016) -  DISCERN, the leader in Insights-as-a-Service for investment professionals and corporate executives, today announced DISCERN Retail Data-as-a-Service for its Insights-as-a-Service platform, designed to optimize retail investment decision-making on public and private consumer retailers, banners and U.S. store locations. Subscribers gain a sustainable information advantage by monitoring 10x the number of companies possible with legacy processes, resulting in more insights and faster 'awareness to informed decision' time.

"The growing availability of public and commercial data offers retail investors an opportunity to make superior investment decisions," said Harry Blount, CEO and Chief Avatar at DISCERN. "But most financial decision-makers still rely on antiquated pre-internet tools, such as spreadsheets, that fail to capture investment insights buried in the growing volume and variety of rapidly changing information from both financial and non-financial sources."

DISCERN connects financial decision-makers to a growing ecosystem of public and commercial data sources, which encompasses supply, demand, transaction and valuation factors. Now financial decision-makers can subscribe to DISCERN Retail Data-as-a-Service to optimize decision-making on 900+ public and private consumer retailers, 1,500+ banners and 400,000+ U.S. store locations. DISCERN aggregates, unifies, persistently scans and augments data through machine-learning and human domain expert synthesis.

"The ongoing shift from a physical to virtual world has dramatically intensified competition for consumer dollars," said Richard Church, Retail Avatar at DISCERN. "In this environment, retail executives, investors, lenders and developers need more sophisticated tools to easily identify optimal store locations at a local, regional and national level. DISCERN provides retail decision-makers with 360-degree visualized data in-context, which minimizes blind spots and biases, and ultimately results in better decisions."

"Simple data aggregation isn't enough in today's interconnected and complex world," said Blount. "Investors need to continually monitor a widening pool of data, minimize their blind spots and 'know what they don't know.'"

DISCERN Insights-as-a-Service Platform

The DISCERN Insights-as-a-Service Platform is a cloud-based subscription service that leverages machine-learning, semantic data modeling, persistent data synthesis and cognitive visualization. The platform includes the following product options optimized to fit into various subscribers' desired workflows.

Signals-as-a-Service® - Subscribers are notified of actionable retail events such as valuation and location anomalies, shifts in market share and changes in profitability as they are identified. These signals can be used to automate subscribers' buy-sell screening process. Notifications are powered by DISCERN's proprietary signal processing engine and leverage machine-learning, pattern detection and natural language processing.

Visual Analytics - DISCERN accelerates users' ability to visually process and analyze disparate data for emerging investment opportunities through its retail white space tool, which empowers users to quickly assess the ability of a retailer to expand its store base and to evaluate potential merger/acquisition scenarios. Subscribers can select time-based views, rank views, entity views, charts, images, maps and other visuals.

Scheduled, On-Demand and Personalized Reports - Subscribers can create personalized reports using professional templates and automate report processes based on pre-selected images from the Image Gallery. Standard reports can be delivered on a subscriber-selected, pre-determined schedule or on-demand.

Retail Avatars - Subscribers have access to subject-matter experts who publish platform insights and continually enrich data, signals and insights for subscribers based on their feedback.

Availability

The DISCERN Retail Data-as-a-Service is immediately available as a Retail Essential or Retail Exponential option to the DISCERN Insights-as-a-Service Platform, a cloud-based subscription service that can be set up in minutes and instantly configurable and accessible through any browser-enabled device. For a demo and more information, please visit http://www.discern.com/consumer-retail.

About DISCERN

DISCERN, the leader in Insights-as-a-Service for investment professionals and corporate executives, delivers personalized insights through data, signals and visuals. Financial decision-makers gain a sustainable information advantage through DISCERN's next-generation platform, which leverages cognitive analytics to produce more insights and accelerates the time from 'awareness to informed decision.' DISCERN's unique Signals-as-a-Service® delivers personalized signals to subscribers about investment-related anomalies and events. The DISCERN Insights-as-a-Service Platform is the only solution that enables both active and passive financial insight discovery. Seven of the 10 largest fund managers in the United States are DISCERN customers. Founded in 2009, the company is privately held and funded by Artiman Ventures and individual investors. DISCERN operates its headquarters in the Silicon Valley with an office in New York.

Signals as a Service® is a registered trademark owned by DISCERN. All other trademarks and registered trademarks in this document are the properties of their respective owners.