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BSA is now Shiloh Technologies, named for its point-of-sale data processing Shiloh Software introduced in 1999. The POS software was developed in conjunction with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. supplier teams to manage and understand the mountains of data generated by the retailer’s Retail Link program.

The change reflects not only customer association within the industry of the company with its Shiloh product, but also its moves in the last two years to expand services to retailers other than Wal-Mart.

CEO Lisa Bohn said Shiloh Technologies will work with as many as 30 retailers by the end of 2008. The company hired seven new employees in 2007, an increase to 18 overall.

“Our customers have asked us to support them beyond Wal-Mart,” she said. “They’ve had a great experience with Shiloh with their Wal-Mart team and their next question is, ‘Can I get it for Target, Office Max, K-Mart?’

“We’ve really moved beyond Bentonville in our capabilities,” she said, “and we’d like our name to reflect who we are.”

For the second straight year, Shiloh Technologies has been voted among the Best in Class in Consumer Goods Technology’s 2008 Reader’s Choice Awards.

Shiloh was named tops in the Demand Data Analytics category for companies with up to $1 billion in sales, beating out ACNielsen Inc., and ranked sixth overall.

“The fun part about the award is it is customers voting for you,” Bohn said. “They are saying, ‘Here’s the tool that’s really helping us with our business.’”

Shiloh Expands Services

Beyond Wal-Mart Universe

Shiloh vice president of market development Bill Akins said the growth of services to retailers other than Wal-Mart was a natural progression.

“We set out from the beginning to be the absolute best at understanding — and helping our client understand and tackle — Wal-Mart information,” Akins said. “The last two years has been a major focus on expanding outside the Wal-Mart universe and making our clients have a general engine that looks at their entire business.”

Bohn said Shiloh has 70 customers representing 175 supplier teams at Wal-Mart and 20 of Shiloh’s customers are dealing with multiple retailers.

Bohn said the challenges of working with retailers other than Wal-Mart encompass learning what is different about their POS systems, how to work the data and what best practices the retailer prefers.

Security is also a necessity that Shiloh can provide, Bohn said. A supplier team from Target cannot have access to the category data from Wal-Mart, and vice versa.

But Shiloh can take all the various data and provide a comprehensive look at a company’s sales, inventory and distribution.

“Customers know if Shiloh can handle all this [Wal-Mart] data, they know we can handle this smaller slice of data,” she said. “It gives them a competitive advantage to get that data lined up and see how they’re selling across what channels and brands and get it to a strategic place to understand how they are going to market.”