DIGITAL SOLUTIONS
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Tech Providers Exhibit Latest Solutions at NRF Show
Innovative applications for retailers were on displays at the National Retail
Federation (NRF) Annual Convention & Expo earlier this month in New York.
“Retailers are facing increasing pressure to explore new ways to engage consumers
across online and mobile platforms as well as in traditional storefronts while
reducing inventory costs,” said Michelle Tinsley, director of Intel’s Retail Solutions Division.
Intel and hundreds of other technology providers on the exhibit floor are working to provide solutions that enable retailers to deliver engaging brand experiences as well as developing new ways to analyze data and ensure the products that shoppers want are available.
For example, METRO GROUP hypermarket REAL, a part of the fourth-largest retailer in the world, is using digital shelf labels installed on end-cap displays at a future store to increase awareness of new products with eye-catching animations and instantly change pricing on soon-to-expire items. The shelf labels contain an LCD module that can display price, product information and high-definition video. The content management system runs on an Intel Core processor-based platform with Intel Active Management Technology (Intel AMT) that allows the retailer to automatically update pricing throughout the store and reduce costs associated with regularly updating price tags.
Another company exhibiting related technology garnered lots of attention on the show floor. Pricer is a provider of an electronic display and Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) platform, solutions, and services for communicating, managing, and optimizing price and product information on the retail floor. The platform is based on a two-way communication protocol to ensure traceability and management of resources.
Pricer has installations in close to 50 countries and boasts the largest ESL world market share. Its customers include many of the world’s top retailers and some of the foremost retail chains in Europe, Japan and the USA.
Dell unveiled Cloud Client Computing for Retail, its first end-to-end cloud solution specifically designed to enable retailers to seamlessly move to an in-store cloud environment. The comprehensive offering addresses endpoint devices, networking, security, virtualization, infrastructure, management tools and services to help retailers realize cloud-related benefits such as increased efficiency and cost savings in a Dell-designed Cloud Client Computing solution that is customizable to each retailer’s unique environment and needs. The solution allows retailers to simplify store system hardware by hosting and managing complex point-of-sale (POS) and inventory systems centrally in the store or in the cloud.
“Until now, most retailers have had to cobble together products and services from multiple vendors in order to address cloud solutions and virtualization in their store environment,” said Mike Adams, retail industry practice lead at Dell. “As a result of our recent acquisitions that include Wyse, SonicWALL and Quest, Dell is able to provide an end-to-end solution that has been tested and optimized for retail’s unique environment.
Motorola Solutions announced that it is expanding its enterprise mobile computing portfolio to include devices built on the Microsoft Windows Embedded 8 Handheld platform. This expansion brings Windows Phone 8 technologies to enterprise customers, providing an innovative addition to Motorola’s portfolio of devices built on the Windows Mobile and Windows Embedded Handheld 6.5 platforms and enhancing Motorola’s future solutions.
“Together with Microsoft, Motorola Solutions will deliver specialized, durable, enterprise mobile devices for line-of-business applications across the retail supply chain from manufacturing to the retail store floor,” said Girish Rishi, senior vice president, Enterprise Solutions, Motorola Solutions.
Extending its commitment to innovation in retail with mobile technology, SAP AG previewed a new wave of mobile apps to help retailers market to and engage with consumers, enhancing the shopping experience and boosting customer loyalty. SAP Customer Loyalty, SAP On-Shelf Availability Manager and SAP Retail Store Ops
“With 70% of consumers grabbing for their phone while shopping, it’s not surprising that mobile commerce revenue is expected to explode to US$1 trillion by 2017,” said Sanjay Poonen, president and head of Mobile Division, SAP. “It’s natural that people want to connect with their favorite brands on their mobile devices, whether on the couch or in the store. This presents an opportunity for retailers to meet consumer demand, using mobile technology to deliver superior customer service, drive brand engagement and create unique experiences designed to suit the consumer need in a format they want.”
Galleria Retail Technology Solutions, a provider of retail and category optimization solutions, launched Galleria Strategic Assortment, a range planning tool that enables retailers to build credible assortments across multiple stores and channels. From distribution partners to the Internet to local stores, the tool allows retailers to instantly see the benefits of a particular decision across the entire estate.
“Up to this point, it’s been nearly impossible for retailers to forecast across a broad range of stores, distribution networks and the Internet simultaneously and produce ranges for each product sold,” said Mike Humphreys, CTO, Galleria.
With Strategic Assortment, retailers can achieve a holistic view of where all of their products are going, whether it’s brick-and-mortar stores, third-party distributors or the Internet, and identify the range of products needed to meet the demands of consumers within each channel. In addition, the software provides retailers with instantaneous information on the financial benefits of any product changes made within each channel.
Symphony EYC, a newly-formed company, focused its exhibit on bringing big data customer insights into retail assortment, merchandising, customer engagement and supply chain execution. The company was recently formed from a merger between Aldata, a retail and distribution optimization company, and EYC, a customer engagement specialist.
Company executives at the show said the combined business will serve the needs of the new generation of shoppers, omni-shoppers, who access information anytime, anywhere and make decisions on brands and purchases in real time, online and inside the store. Symphony EYC aims to equip retailers with the key solutions required to engage, personalize, offer and fulfill omni-shoppers expectations as they increasingly use mobile and social platforms to shop.
1010data provides a cloud-based platform that unifies big data and analytics. It is used by hundreds of the world's largest retail enterprises because of its ability to deliver actionable insight from very large amounts of data quickly, easily and inexpensively.
At the NRF show, the company announced it will be participating in the Retail Orphan Initiative (RetailROI). 1010data will donate a computer to the RetailROI computer lab in the Dominican Republic for every qualified retailer that signed up in advance and completes a 10-minute demo presentation.
“RetailROI is a great organization which aims to provide real solutions for the more than 400 million underprivileged children worldwide,” said Jed Alpert, vice president of marketing at 1010data.
Reevoo, the cloud-based social business solution provider, announced Reevoo Insight, a new real-time social analytics solution that empowers customer-centric decision-making and strategy development across the organization, enabling companies to identify business opportunities and accelerate responses to customers’ needs before the customer disengages.
It is increasingly critical for companies across all industries to extract meaningful and actionable information from the growing volume of social data created in order to understand their customers better, react faster to shifting demands, and drive immediate results with fewer resources. Reevoo Insight analyses structured and unstructured feedback generated by verified purchasers and combines it with internal business data, peer-to-peer conversations and customer behavioural data to distill insights about customers, markets, supply chains and operations.
Tensator has expanded its retail offerings with the launch of an integrated virtual assistant call forward system and a new self service solution. The interactive in-store technologies are designed to improve the customer experience.
The Tensator Virtual Assistant is fully integrated with Tensator’s eQ SLQ 3000 (single line queuing) call forward system. Tensator aimsto offer retailers a powerful solution to guide, inform and enrich the customer journey by engaging with and informing the customer as they are called forward to checkout. The company’s Multi-Service Machines which empower customers to independently, efficiently and securely perform retail services themselves, such as the sale and dispensing of gift cards, payment of services and invoices, and mobile phone account refill.
MSMs are ideal for the retail environment as they provide swift and efficient self-service options to customers, improving the overall customer experience and delivering resource efficiencies to the retailer.
VeriFone Systems exhibited its comprehensive suite of payments solutions designed to help retailers interact with, impact and impress their customers. The innovations on the show floor included a new, size-adaptable payment acceptance solution for tablets—the first to work with iPad mini; new versions of PAYware Mobile for iPhone 5 and the new iPod touch; and new, cloud-based services for managing ever-growing payments complexity.
Brickstream, a provider of behavior intelligence solutions for environments where people shop, gather, work and play, announced the release of QueueIQ, the next generation of the company’s queue management solution. Designed to help retailers and other types of customer-centric businesses better manage wait times and improve service, QueueIQ is an integral part of Brickstream’s BehaviorIQ platform and uses SeeMore three dimensional intelligent edge devices to capture accurate, real-time insights into in-store traffic and queuing behavior.
Queues present a hurdle for brick and mortar stores. Brickstream QueueIQ addresses this challenge by tracking people as they enter, move through and exit a store, so that retailers can better understand shopping behavior the way they understand online shopping behavior. Retailers use the insights gained to keep customers happy at the register, in the aisles and on the floor.