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  • Right-Time Retail Part 1

    - by David Dorf
    This is the first in a three-part series. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Right-Time Revolution Technology enables some amazing feats in retail. I can order flowers for my wife while flying 30,000 feet in the air. I can order my groceries in the subway and have them delivered later that day. I can even see how clothes look on me without setting foot in a store. Who knew that a TV, diamond necklace, or even a car would someday be as easy to purchase as a candy bar? Can technology make a mattress an impulse item? Wake-up and your back is hurting, so you rollover and grab your iPad, then a new mattress is delivered the next day. Behind the scenes the many processes are being choreographed to make the sale happen. This includes moving data between systems with the least amount for friction, which in some cases is near real-time. But real-time isn’t appropriate for all the integrations. Think about what a completely real-time retailer would look like. A consumer grabs toothpaste off the shelf, and all systems are immediately notified so that the backroom clerk comes running out and pushes the consumer aside so he can replace the toothpaste on the shelf. Such a system is not only cost prohibitive, but it’s also very inefficient and ineffectual. Retailers must balance the realities of people, processes, and systems to find the right speed of execution. That’ what “right-time retail” means. Retailers used to sell during the day and count the money and restock at night, but global expansion and the Web have complicated that simplistic viewpoint. Our 24hr society demands not only access but also speed, which constantly pushes the boundaries of our IT systems. In the last twenty years, there have been three major technology advancements that have moved us closer to real-time systems. Networking is the first technology that drove the real-time trend. As systems became connected, it became easier to move data between them. In retail we no longer had to mail the daily business report back to corporate each day as the dial-up modem could transfer the data. That was soon replaced with trickle-polling, when sale transactions were occasionally sent from stores to corporate throughout the day, often through VSAT. Then we got terrestrial networks like DSL and Ethernet that allowed the constant stream of data between stores and corporate. When corporate could see the sales transactions coming from stores, it could better plan for replenishment and promotions. That drove the need for speed into the supply chain and merchandising, but for many years those systems were stymied by the huge volumes of data. Nordstrom has 150 million SKU/Store combinations when planning (RPAS); The Gap generates 110 million price changes during end-of-season (RPM); Argos does 1.78 billion calculations executed each day for replenishment planning (AIP). These areas are now being alleviated by the second technology, storage. The typical laptop disk drive runs at 5,400rpm with PCs stepping up to 7,200rpm and servers hitting 15,000rpm. But the platters can only spin so fast, so to squeeze more performance we’ve had to rely on things like disk striping. Then solid state drives (SSDs) were introduced and prices continue to drop. (Augmenting your harddrive with a SSD is the single best PC upgrade these days.) RAM continues to be expensive, but compressing data in memory has allowed more efficient use. So a few years back, Oracle decided to build a box that incorporated all these advancements to move us closer to real-time. This family of products, often categorized as engineered systems, combines the hardware and software so that they work together to provide better performance. How much better? If Exadata powered a 747, you’d go from New York to Paris in 42 minutes, and it would carry 5,000 passengers. If Exadata powered baseball, games would last only 18 minutes and Boston’s Fenway would hold 370,000 fans. The Exa-family enables processing more data in less time. So with faster networks and storage, that brings us to the third and final ingredient. If we continue to process data in traditional ways, we won’t be able to take advantage of the faster networks and storage. Enter what Harvard calls “The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century” – the data scientist. New technologies like the Hadoop-powered Oracle Big Data Appliance, Oracle Advanced Analytics, and Oracle Endeca Information Discovery change the way in which we organize data. These technologies allow us to extract actionable information from raw data at incredible speeds, often ad-hoc. So the foundation to support the real-time enterprise exists, but how does a retailer begin to take advantage? The most visible way is through real-time marketing, but I’ll save that for part 3 and instead begin with improved integrations for the assets you already have in part 2.

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  • Heroes Of Newerth Gone Retail !

    <b>Linux Gaming News:</b> "Today the DOTA mod remake Heroes Of Newerth from S2games has gone retail ! S2Games made GNU/Linux clients for their Savage series and HoN is no exception ! It runs pretty good on GNU/Linux and offer a native 64-bit client."

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  • Oracle Retail Industry Forum Europe 2014 – Registration Now Open!

    - by Marie-Christin Hansen-Oracle
    We are delighted to announce that registration for the 4th annual Oracle Retail Industry Forum Europe (ORIF Europe) is now open. The event is being held from 10-11 September at the Renaissance St Pancras Hotel in London. ORIF Europe is a must attend event for Oracle Retail customers, retailers who are about to embark on an Oracle implementation, or for those who simply wish to learn more about Oracle Retail solutions and how they support the provision of commerce anywhere. Further details will be announced over the coming weeks, but already confirmed as speakers are: Paul Hornby, Head of eCommerce at Shop Direct, who will discuss the company’s ambitions, challenges faced and the strategy undertaken by the team in driving the business from a catalogue-based to a web-based commerce business. The session will reveal how Shop Direct and Oracle Retail are working together to achieve the transformation of this business into a world-class digital retailer, by building a foundation for future growth for each of its individual brands and target markets. Kate Ancketill, CEO and Founder of GDR Creative Intelligence who will illustrate what best-in-market 'Access Anywhere' retail looks like. From individual retail and next generation personalisation of in-store service, to the land grab for delivery innovation, cutting edge brands are 'training' consumers to check into stores in exchange for concrete benefits. Kate will explore the opportunity this is opening up across the retail landscape. Register for the Oracle Retail Industry Forum today to secure your place.

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  • Exadata a kiskereskedelem (retail) számára

    - by Fekete Zoltán
    Egyik kedvenc blogomban a Rittman Mead honlapján hasznos eloadásra jelent meg infó és letöltési lehetoség. (Lásd a jobb oldali Top Tags dobozban a "blog" kulcsszót, és a legalsó bejegyzést.) Az eloadás címe: Exadata in the Retail Sector, azaz Exadata a felhasználása a kiskereskedelemben. Ezt az eloadást Jon Mead tartotta 2010. március 23-án Londonban az Exadata V2, Oracle Extreme Performance Data Warehousing Seminar rendezvényen. Mint láthatjuk, szinte minden gyümölcsrol beszéltek az Oracle adattárház és üzleti intelligencia virágzó gyümölcsökertjébol az Oracle BI, 11gR2 adattárház tulajdonságai és más témákban. Az eloadások a következo területekrol szóltak: - Exadata techikai ismertetés - ügyfél sztorik: LGR, Allegro, és nagy-britannia egyik legnagyobb online elektronikai kiskereskedelmi cége - Oracle BI - GoldenGate (adatreplikáció) - advanced compression (tranzakciós adatok tömörítése) - particionálás - OLAP - adatbányászat, Oracle Data Mining

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  • Anti-aliasing works for debug runtime but not retail runtime

    - by DeadMG
    I'm experimenting with setting various graphical settings in my Direct3D9 application, and I'm currently facing a curious problem with anti-aliasing. When running under the debug runtime, AA works as expected, and I don't have any errors or warnings. But when running under the retail runtime, the image isn't anti-aliased at all. I don't get any errors, the device creates and executes just fine. As I honestly have little idea where the problem is, I will simply give a relatively high-level overview of the architecture involved, rather than specific problematic code. Simply put, I render my 3D content to a texture, which I then render to the back buffer. Any suggestions as to where to look?

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  • Crosstalk Retail Panel

    - by David Dorf
    Susan Reda from Stores magazine hosted a panel at Crosstalk earlier this year.  I found the discussions on mobile and Commerce Anywhere very interesting, especially from the perspective of retailers not based in the US.  On the panel were: Michel Joncas, CIO at Groupe Dynamite (Canada) David Hunn, Head of IT Delivery at John Lewis (UK) Dan West, CIO at New Look (UK) Tom Madigan, VP at Oracle Retail Take a look: &amp;amp;amp;lt;span id=&amp;amp;amp;quot;XinhaEditingPostion&amp;amp;amp;quot;&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;gt;

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  • Retail Link data storage requirements

    - by Randy Walker
    I was asked today about how much data an average Retail Link analyst (Walmart vendor) would consume.  I thought I would write this small post for future reference. Of course this vastly depends on the amount of skus, how long you want to archive data, and if you want store level sales. Most reports take up very little space. Most times when you download a report (total sales per sku for last week), you will overwrite the previous week’s report.  However, most users will take the data inside their downloaded report, and add it to a database or larger excel spreadsheet.  This way, the user has a history of the sales of each item/sku per week over the last 2+ years.  I would estimate 1 user to consume around 1-2 gb of space, at most, over the course of 2 years. If you start archiving store level sales those numbers can drastically increase up to 10gb or more very quickly.

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  • NRF Week - Disney Store Tour

    - by sarah.taylor(at)oracle.com
    Disney has created a real buzz at this year's NRF event. Yesterday morning we began the Oracle Retail Exchange program with a visit to the flagship Disney store in Times Square. Additionally Oracle made a key announcement with Disney  on Oracle Retail's Point of Sale implementation in 330 stores worldwide. Today   Disney's Steve Finney gave a super session on The Magic of Disney at the NRF Big Show. We also saw Disney making an exclusive news announcement about their plans for Global store openings at the Oracle trade show stand - with a little help from Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Disney Stores have been entirely reinvented since the company in 2008 took ownership after previously franchising the retail arm of the business. They have subsequently been a strong Oracle partner and technology has played a key role in their re imagination of the store environment. The new Imagination stores have a 20% higher footfall and margins are up 25%. The Disney brand is synonymous with magical and memorable experiences for children of all ages. The company is achieving a unique retail experience that delights children and shareholders alike! Technology is a key pillar in helping to deliver on both a strong operating model and a unique customer experience - the best thirty minutes in a child's day is their aim. Steve Finney this morning said their technology has to be as reliable as a theme park ride. Store experiences are much more enjoyable when there are short waiting times and children can interact with their favourite characters through magic mirrors, mobile point of sale, touch screens and custom animations that are digitally transmitted to stores globally. The Oracle Retail Point of Sale with iPad touch screens reduces check out times, stores customer data, ensures that promotions are delivered accurately and reduces losses. This means higher levels of guest conversion, increased availability and convenience for customers who want to check availability at other locations. Disney is a pioneer. At NRF's 100th show, we had the privilege of learning from a retailer using technology as a creative force to drive their business forward.

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  • Mobile and Social for Retail

    - by David Dorf
    I've got two speaking gigs in the next few weeks, so I thought I'd preview both here. First I'll be at eTail West on February 24th to talk about mobile. I'll be previewing a new study of how shoppers are using mobile phones. Here's a sneak peek at one of the slides: It should be no surprise that as more consumers adopt smartphones, more are finding ways to use them to help with shopping. Sometimes that's to find a store, download a coupon, or do price comparisons. I'll also be discussing the NRF Mobile Blueprint, and will walk through an example of mobile impacting the in-store experience. Retailers need to look upon mobile as the method of bringing the digital assets of e-commerce into the aisles to enhance shopping. On March 9th I'll be at NRF Innovate co-presenting with Jon Kubo of Wet Seal on social strategies. Jon is a retail innovation rock-star and I always learn something new from every conversation with him. Below is a another slide preview: I cheated a little on the top 10 most popular retailer pages by not including Victoria's Secret Pink. VC is already represented, so I didn't include them a second time. The most interesting statistic I found was that the average user spends 55 minutes on Facebook a day. Wow! I also decided to use the old "Like" and "Fan" icons just because I like them better (pun intended). Wet Seal has been collecting interesting statistics on liked products, so I hope Jon will share lots (I'm on a roll). Hope to see you at both events.

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  • Saudi Arabian Retail Distribution Business Ajlan & Bros Selects Oracle Commerce

    - by Marie-Christin Hansen
    Ajlan & Bros has selected Oracle Commerce in a bid to improve its customer engagement capabilities and drive its expansion plans. The large Middle Eastern retail distribution business, which specializes in the design, manufacture and supply of clothing across the Middle East, is seeking to expand its operations, which consist of a distribution network of more than 7,000 points of sale and represent more than 15 international brands. The business is aiming to build brand awareness globally with an interest in the European and American markets. Choosing Oracle Commerce will provide Ajlan & Bros with the capability to optimize each customer engagement, which will help to increase cross-channel promotion and improve a unified online, mobile and social experience for customers. The company will be able to leverage Oracle Commerce’s advanced marketing and personalization capabilities, with enhanced integrated search and content management functionality across its channels. The selection of Oracle Commerce followed an extensive evaluation of competitor solutions, with Oracle selected due to the solutions strong capabilities in cross-channel ecommerce and customer experience management, as well as a solid track record of maintaining best practice. Press release: Ajlan & Bros Selects Oracle Commerce to Support Expansion Strategy

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  • Customer Experience Management for Retail 2.0 - part 2 / 2

    - by Sanjeev Sharma
    In the previous post, i discussed some of the key trends shaping up in the retail industry, their implications and the challenges facing retailers seeking to regain control of the buyer-seller relationship. Is Customer Experience Management the panacea for the ailing retailers who are now awakening to the power of the consumer? Quite honestly, customer acquisition, retention and satisfaction have been top of mind for retailers for quite some time now. The missing piece of this puzzle is bringing all those countless hours of strategy and planning to fruition. This is more of an execution gap than anything else. Although technology has made consumers more informed, more mobile and more social, customer experience is still largely defined by delivering on the following: Consistent experiences, whether shopping online or offline Personalize-able interaction ("mass market" sounds good as an internal strategy but not when you are a buyer!) Timely order fulfillment, if not pro-active notification of delays Below is a concept architecture for streamlining front-end, mid-office and back-end interfaces through shared process to achieve consistency and efficiency in managing the customer experience from order capture to order provisioning.

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  • Facial Recognition for Retail

    - by David Dorf
    My son decided to do his science project on how the brain recognizes faces.  Faces are so complicated and important that the brain has a dedicated area for just that purpose.  During our research, we came across some emerging uses for facial recognition in the retail industry. If you believe the movies, recognizing faces as they walk by a camera is easy for computers but that's not the reality.  Huge investments are being made by the U.S. government in this area, with a focus on airport security.  Now, companies like Eye See are leveraging that research for marketing purposes.  They do things like track eyes while viewing newspaper ads to see which ads get more "eye time."  This can help marketers make better placement and color decisions. But what caught my eye (that was too easy) was their new mannequins that watch shoppers.  These mannequins, being tested at European retailers like Benetton, watch shoppers that walk by and identify their gender, race, and age.  This helps the retailer better understand the types of customers being attracted to the outfit on the mannequin.  Of course to be most accurate, the software has pictures of the employees so they can be filtered out.  Since the mannequins are closer to the shoppers and at eye-level, they are more accurate than traditional in-ceiling LP cameras. Marketing agency RedPepper is offering retailers the ability to recognize loyalty shoppers at their doors using Facedeal.  For customers that have opted into the program, when they enter the store their face is recognized and they are checked in.  Then, as a reward, they are sent an offer on their smartphone. It won't be long before retailers begin to listen to shoppers are they walk the aisles, then keywords can be collected and aggregated to give the retailer an idea of what people are saying about their stores and products.  Sentiment analysis based on what's said or even facial expressions can't be far off. Clearly retailers need to be cautions and respect customer privacy.  That's why these technologies are emerging slowly.  But since the next generation of shoppers are less concerned about privacy, I expect these technologies to appear sporadically in the next five years then go mainstream.  Time will tell.

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  • Right-Time Retail Part 3

    - by David Dorf
    This is part three of the three-part series.  Read Part 1 and Part 2 first. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Right-Time Marketing Real-time isn’t just about executing faster; it extends to interactions with customers as well. As an industry, we’ve spent many years analyzing all the data that’s been collected. Yes, that data has been invaluable in helping us make better decisions like where to open new stores, how to assort those stores, and how to price our products. But the recent advances in technology are now making it possible to analyze and deliver that data very quickly… fast enough to impact a potential sale in near real-time. Let me give you two examples. Salesmen in car dealerships get pretty good at sizing people up. When a potential customer walks in the door, it doesn’t take long for the salesman to figure out the revenue at stake. Is this person a real buyer, or just looking for a fun test drive? Will this person buy today or three months from now? Will this person opt for the expensive packages, or go bare bones? While the salesman certainly asks some leading questions, much of information is discerned through body language. But body language doesn’t translate very well over the web. Eloqua, which was acquired by Oracle earlier this year, reads internet body language. By tracking the behavior of the people visiting your web site, Eloqua categorizes visitors based on their propensity to buy. While Eloqua’s roots have been in B2B, we’ve been looking at leveraging the technology with ATG to target B2C. Knowing what sites were previously visited, how often the customer has been to your site recently, and how long they’ve spent searching can help understand where the customer is in their purchase journey. And knowing that bit of information may be enough to help close the deal with a real-time offer, follow-up email, or online customer service pop-up. This isn’t so different from the days gone by when the clerk behind the counter of the corner store noticed you were lingering in a particular aisle, so he walked over to help you compare two products and close the sale. You appreciated the personalized service, and he knew the value of the long-term relationship. Move that same concept into the digital world and you have Oracle’s CX Suite, a cloud-based offering of end-to-end customer experience tools, assembled primarily from acquisitions. Those tools are Oracle Marketing (Eloqua), Oracle Commerce (ATG, Endeca), Oracle Sales (Oracle CRM On Demand), Oracle Service (RightNow), Oracle Social (Collective Intellect, Vitrue, Involver), and Oracle Content (Fatwire). We are providing the glue that binds the CIO and CMO together to unleash synergies that drive the top-line higher, and by virtue of the cloud-approach, keep costs at bay. My second example of real-time marketing takes place in the store but leverages the concepts of Web marketing. In 1962 the decline of personalized service in retail began. Anyone know the significance of that year? That’s when Target, K-Mart, and Walmart each opened their first stores, and over the succeeding years the industry chose scale over personal service. No longer were you known as “Jane with the snotty kid so make sure we check her out fast,” but you suddenly became “time-starved female age 20-30 with kids.” I’m not saying that was a bad thing – it was the right thing for our industry at the time, and it enabled a huge amount of growth, cheaper prices, and more variety of products. But scale alone is no longer good enough. Today’s sophisticated consumer demands scale, experience, and personal attention. To some extent we’ve delivered that on websites via the magic of cookies, your willingness to log in, and sophisticated data analytics. What store manager wouldn’t love a report detailing all the visitors to his store, where they came from, and which products that examined? People trackers are getting more sophisticated, incorporating infrared, video analytics, and even face recognition. (Next time you walk in front on a mannequin, don’t be surprised if it’s looking back.) But the ultimate marketing conduit is the mobile phone. Since each mobile phone emits a unique number on WiFi networks, it becomes the cookie of the physical world. Assuming congress keeps privacy safeguards reasonable, we’ll have a win-win situation for both retailers and consumers. Retailers get to know more about the consumer’s purchase journey, and consumers get higher levels of service with the retailer. When I call my bank, a couple things happen before the call is connected. A reverse look-up on my phone number identifies me so my accounts can be retrieved from Siebel CRM. Then the system anticipates why I’m calling based on recent transactions. In this example, it sees that I was just charged a foreign currency fee, so it assumes that’s the reason I’m calling. It puts all the relevant information on the customer service rep’s screen as it connects the call. When I complain about the fee, the rep immediately sees I’m a great customer and I travel lots, so she suggests switching me to their traveler’s card that doesn’t have foreign transaction fees. That technology is powered by a product called Oracle Real-Time Decisions, a rules engine built to execute very quickly, basically in the time it takes the phone to ring once. So let’s combine the power of that product with our new-found mobile cookie and provide contextual customer interactions in real-time. Our first opportunity comes when a customer crosses a pre-defined geo-fence, typically a boundary around the store. Context is the key to our interaction: that’s the customer (known or anonymous), the time of day and day of week, and location. Thomas near the downtown store on a Wednesday at noon means he’s heading to lunch. If he were near the mall location on a Saturday morning, that’s a completely different context. But on his way to lunch, we’ll let Thomas know that we’ve got a new shipment of ASICS running shoes on display with a simple text message. We used the context to look-up Thomas’ past purchases and understood he was an avid runner. We used the fact that this was lunchtime to select the type of message, in this case an informational message instead of an offer. Thomas enters the store, phone in hand, and walks to the shoe department. He scans one of the new ASICS shoes using the convenient QR Codes we provided on the shelf-tags, but then he starts scanning low-end Nikes. Each scan is another opportunity to both learn from Thomas and potentially interact via another message. Since he historically buys low-end Nikes and keeps scanning them, he’s likely falling back into his old ways. Our marketing rules are currently set to move loyal customer to higher margin products. We could have set the dials to increase visit frequency, move overstocked items, increase basket size, or many other settings, but today we are trying to move Thomas to higher-margin products. We send Thomas another text message, this time it’s a personalized offer for 10% off ASICS good for 24 hours. Offering him a discount on Nikes would be throwing margin away since he buys those anyway. We are using our marketing dollars to change behavior that increases the long-term value of Thomas. He decides to buy the ASICS and scans the discount code on his phone at checkout. Checkout is yet another opportunity to interact with Thomas, so the transaction is sent back to Oracle RTD for evaluation. Since Thomas didn’t buy anything with the shoes, we’ll print a bounce-back coupon on the receipt offering 30% off ASICS socks if he returns within seven days. We have successfully started moving Thomas from low-margin to high-margin products. In both of these marketing scenarios, we are able to leverage data in near real-time to decide how best to interact with the customer and lead to an increase in the lifetime value of the customer. The key here is acting at the moment the customer shows interest using the context of the situation. We aren’t pushing random products at haphazard times. We are tailoring the marketing to be very specific to this customer, and it’s the technology that allows this to happen in near real-time. Conclusion As we enable more right-time integrations and interactions, retailers will begin to offer increased service to their customers. Localized and personalized service at scale will drive loyalty and lead to meaningful revenue growth for the retailers that execute well. Our industry needs to support Commerce Anywhere…and commerce anytime as well.

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  • NRF Big Show 2011 -- Part 2

    - by David Dorf
    One of the things I love about attending NRF is visiting the smaller booths to see what new innovative ideas have sprung up. After all, by watching emerging technologies we can get a sense of how the retail experience might change. After NRF I'm hoping to write a post on what I found, if anything, so be sure to check back. At the Oracle Retail booth we'll be demonstrating some of the aspects of the changing retail experience. These demos use a mix of GA and experimental components. Here are some highlights: 1. Checkin We wrote a consumer iPhone app we call Store Gateway that lets consumers access information from the store. They'll start by doing a checkin when they arrive that will alert the store manager via another iPhone app we wrote called Mobile Manager. Additionally, we display a welcome messaging using Starmount's digital sign. 2. Receive Offers There are three interaction points where a store can easily make an offer to a consumer: checkin, product scans, and checkout. For this demo we're calling our Universal Offer Engine at checkin to determine the best offer for this particular consumer. This offer is then displayed on the consumer's phone as well as on the digital sign. 3. Scan Products To thwart consumers from scanning product barcodes, we used Store Inventory Management to print QRCodes on shelf label then provided access to a scanner in the Store Gateway iphone app. When the consumer scans the shelf label they are shown product information provided by the retailer. 4. Checkout While we don't have a NFC-enabled mobile phone, we have a NFC chip that can attach to a phone. We're using this to checkout using a reader provided by ViVOTech. Tap the phone on the reader, and the POS accesses the customer#, coupons, and payment information. This really speeds the checkout process. 5. Digital Receipt After the transaction is complete, a digital copy of the receipt is sent to Intuit's QuickReceipts where consumers to store all their digital receipts. There's even an iPhone app that provides easy access to the receipts. This covers about half of what what we'll be showing, so be sure to stop by. I'll also be talking about how mobile is impacting the retail experience at the Wednesday morning session NRF Mobile Retail Initiative: a Blueprint for Action. See you at the Big Show!

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  • Switch from VOLUME_KMSCLIENT to RETAIL channel

    - by trogper
    On my laptop I had Windows 8 Pro KMS activated, then I intalled WMC, which changed it to RETAIL channel, so I don't need KMS I repeated this on my desktop, which was VOLUME_KMSCLIENT and I thought it would convert it to RETAIL, but now it's just Windows 8 Pro WMC KMS. slmgr -dli partial p.key doesn't match that one I entered I can't update to 8.1 (through win store) when I have VOLUME_KMSCLIENT channel. How do I change it? edit: wmc key that I used is blocked

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  • The Evolution of an Era: Customer Experience in Retail

    - by Michael Hylton
    Two New Studies Point to the Direction Retailers are Taking in their CX Initiatives. Is it the Right Direction? The sheer velocity of change in retailing and customer behavior is forcing retailers to reinvigorate, expand and sharpen their vital Customer Experience (CX) strategies. Customers are becoming increasingly dynamic as they race to embrace the newest digital channels; shop in new ways on mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets, on the Web and in the store; share experiences socially; and interact with their preferred brands in new ways. Retailers are stepping up to their customers as they and their competitors create new modes of customer interaction. Underpinning these changes are vast quantities of customer data as customers flood digital channels and the social sphere. The informed retailer must now understand what their priorities are and what they should be for the future. To better understand this, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Oracle independently launched CX-focused surveys to uncover what retailing leadership found important today. By comparing the results of these two studies together, we can further discover new insights about the industry. Click here to download this informative white paper.

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  • 2013 Predictions for Retail

    - by David Dorf
    Its that time of year to roll out the predictions for next year.  I can't say I've really nailed it in the past, but feel free to look back at my 2012, 2011, and 2010 predictions.  I'm not expecting anything earth-shattering this year; just continued maturation of several technologies that are finally taking hold. 1. Next day delivery -- Amazon finally decided it wasn't worth fighting state taxes and instead decided to place distribution centers everywhere so they can potentially offer next-day deliveries.  Not to be outdone, Walmart is looking to leverage its huge physical presence to offer the same.  Clubs like ShopRunner are pushing delivery barriers as well, so the norm is shifting to free shipping in a few days or relatively cheap shipping overnight.  Retailers need be thinking about how to ship from physical stores. 2. Bring your own device -- Earlier this year Intuit bought AisleBuyer, a mobile self-checkout start-up, at least somewhat validating the BYOD approach.  Grocery stores, especially in Europe, have been supporting in-aisle self-scanning for a while and I'm betting it will find a home in certain verticals in the US too.  There's also the BYOD concept for employees.  Some retailers are considering issuing mobile devices at hiring along side the shirt and name-tag.  Employees become responsible for the hardware until they leave. 3. TV shopping -- Will Apple finally release a TV product in 2013?  Who knows?  But the industry isn't standing still. Companies like QVC and HSN are already successfully combining the TV and online experiences for shopping.  Comcast is partnering with Tivo to allow viewers to interact with ads with Paypal handing payment.  This will be a slow maturation, but expect TVs to get smarter and eventually become a new selling channel (pun intended) for retailers. 4. Privacy backlash -- It only takes one big incident to stir the public, and I'm betting we have one in 2013.  Facebook, Google, or Apple will test the boundaries of what the public is willing to accept.  It could involve a retailer using geo-location technology, or possibly video analytics.  And as is always the case, the offender will apologize, temporarily remove the technology, and wait 2-3 years for it to be generally accepted.  Privacy is a moving target. 5. More NFC -- I've come to the conclusion that adoption of any banking technology is going to be slow.  It was slow for credit cards, ATMs, and online billpay so why should it be any different for NFC?  Maybe, just maybe the iPhone 5S will have an NFC chip, but we're not going to see mainstream uptake for years.  Next year we'll continue to see incremental improvements from Isis, Google, and Paypal and a plethora of new startups, but don't toss your magstripe cards just yet. 6. In-store location -- The technologies for tracking people inside stores is really improving.  Retailers can track people using video cameras, infrared, and by the WiFi radios in mobile phones.  We're getting closer to the point where accuracy could be a shelf-facing, which will help retailers understand how people shop, where they spend time, and what displays attract them.  Expect CPG companies to get involved and partner with retailers, since the data benefits both parties.  Consumers will benefit by being directed right to the products they seek.  (In 2013 ARTS is forming a workteam to develop new standards in this area.) 7. M&A -- Looking back at 2012 there were some really big deals involving IBM, Oracle, JDA, and NCR and I expect that trend will likely continue as vendors add assets to bolster their portfolios.  Many retailers are due for an IT transformation to support anywhere, anytime shoppers, and one-stop-vendors can minimize complexity and costs. Predictions from other sources: Independent Retailer Stores Magazine IDC Insights Mobile Commerce Daily

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  • A Closed Mind Killed the Retail Star

    Im on the plane flying back to New Zealand and Im astonished how quickly things have changed since I was last in the US. This trip I visited LA, Las Vegas and San Francisco and I was overwhelmed by the change that I witnessed in 12 short months. This morning following my memory map I headed towards the large  CompuServe electronics store in downtown San Francisco where my wife and I brought a digital camera in 2006. Homing in on the spot I was disappointed to see it had turned into yet another...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • 2-D Codes in Retail

    - by David Dorf
    The UPC you find on packaging is a one-dimensional barcode that's been in use, in one form or another, since the 1970s. While its a good symbology to encode numbers like a product identifier, its not really big enough to hold much more. It also requires a barcode scanner (like those connected to the POS), although iPhone apps like RedLaser have proved a mobile camera can be made to work in many situations. The next generation barcodes are two-dimensional and therefore capable of holding much more information as well as being more conducive to cameras. The most popular format is the QR Code, widely used in Japan because almost every mobile phone has a built-in reader. A typical use for QR Codes is to embed a URL so that that a mobile phone can quickly navigate to the specified web page. QR Codes can be found on posters, billboards, catalogs, and circulars. Speaking of which, Best Buy recently put a QR code in their circular as shown below. If fact, they even updated their iPhone application to include a QR Code reader. I was able to scan the barcode above right from the screen with my iPhone without issues, even though its fairly small in this image. Clearly they are planning to incorporate more QR Codes in their stores and advertising. If you haven't seen QR Codes before, you're not looking hard enough. They are around and will continue to spread.

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  • The Evolution of Customer Experience in Retail - a study by Oracle and TCS

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    Two New Studies Point to the Direction Retailers are Taking in their CX Initiatives. Is it the Right Direction? The sheer velocity of change in retailing and customer behavior is forcing retailers to reinvigorate, expand and sharpen their vital Customer Experience (CX) strategies. Customers are becoming increasingly dynamic as they race to embrace the newest digital channels; shop in new ways on mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets, on the Web and in the store; share experiences socially; and interact with their preferred brands in new ways. Retailers are stepping up to their customers as they and their competitors create new modes of customer interaction. Underpinning these changes are vast quantities of customer data as customers flood digital channels and the social sphere. The informed retailer must now understand what their priorities are and what they should be for the future. To better understand this, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Oracle independently launched CX-focused surveys to uncover what retailing leadership found important today. By comparing the results of these two studies together, we can further discover new insights about the industry. Click here to download this informative white paper.

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