BOCA RATON, Fla. — The Chain Drug Consortium has launched a Web portal that it says will provide members’ retail point-of-sale data to all participating program suppliers.

To create the portal, the Chain Drug Consortium has partnered with Sona LLC. The portal will give suppliers access to consortium member POS data for front-end items.

According to the Chain Drug Consortium, “clear and precise” reporting of the data has been developed to provide suppliers with insights for assisting in category strategy and product decision making.

Sona provides a Web-based, dashboard-driven data management solution that is described as flexible and user-friendly. Suppliers can examine each category so that they can understand key sales drivers for each one specifically. Store clusters will enable suppliers to view the data in ways designed to maximize insights and drive sales.

“We’re excited to share this form of data with our suppliers,’’ says Chain Drug Consortium president and chief executive officer Ed Frisch. “We believe the Sona portal will provide our members and suppliers with additional avenues of growth.’’

He adds that the consortium members’ 1,000-plus locations and combined sales of more than $8 billion position the group as the nation’s fifth-largest drug store chain by dollar volume.

“We are happy to work with the Chain Drug Consortium and its members, helping them to realize their full potential through the analysis of POS data,” comments Bob Candelora, who serves as Sona’s chief executive officer.