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Sorry, Retailers. You’re a Tech Company Now. #retail #innovation #leadership

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LE-AA431_LABS_J_20151012121138(Photo credit Wall Street Journal)

I get the opportunity to speak with, and to, many large retailers and far too often I still here “…we’re not technologist, we’re retailers.” Well here is my take, sorry, retailers you’re a technology company now…and you my friend you are a technologist; at least you better be. [Tweet this] No longer is it good enough to travel to exotic places, or browse an online catalog from Manhattan, score a great buy, mark it up and slap it on to your shelves or web site. In addition to being a purveyor of goods, retailers must create enduring relationships with shoppers where they become a utility to said shoppers.[Tweet this] Innovation labs are a great start, but driving innovation and being innovative is not a department, it’s a culture. [Tweet this] Being a technology company and innovating doesn’t only have to mean  developing a new app or even a device, it can also be a new way of doing business on either the supply or demand side – certainly Uber and other gig economy companies come to mind. These are transformational times that we are in, and retailers must step back and look at their business in completely new ways, and  from a variety of viewpoints. Where you are unable to create, acquire. Understanding the innovator’s dilemma, where you are unable to acquire, instead make key strategic step investments that can help to seed your future. Forget about yesterday, the world of retail has forever changed, and there is not going back. As Alan Kay timelessly stated, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”…otherwise you will just be a tenant on leased land.

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Posted On : Published By : Shawn Harris
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The Future is Now, it just exist as disparate technologies… #innovation #mankind

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I recently read a WSJ article which takes a prescient view of what tech gadgets are staged to prevail in 2016. The article is great, but as usual the gold is in the comment gems. The views on technology across generations is clear, with self-defined “older” generations losing site of the need for it all, and “younger” generations feeling it’s not enough. For my take, I continue to wonder that given the advances and attainable price points of robotics, computer vision, sensor tech, artificial intelligence, and emergent knowledge (Big data), etc… Where are we headed? You always hear that xyz personal technology will make life easier; the more things that we no longer need to know or do, must have a peak in benefits. I don’t want to wake up just to go to “sleep” again.

Source: The Tech That Will Change Your Life in 2016 – WSJ

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Posted On : Published By : Shawn Harris
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2015/2016 Retail Trends and Predictions: RAW DUMP #Retail #Trends #Predictions

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  • More and more shoppers are getting comfortable with shopping from mobile:   Smartphones accounted for 44 percent of all online traffic last weekend and drove 19 percent of online sales, according to IBM Watson Trend.  That is a 65 percent increase over how many sales were driven by smartphones over the same period last year.
  • In-store shoppers were highly efficient. according to a survey conducted by the International Council of Shopping Centers, Thanksgiving shoppers visited an average of 2.7 stores and made a purchase at average of 2.5 stores. The following day, they visited an average of 3.3 stores and opened their wallet at 2.8 stores.  This is likely a reflection of a pattern we’ve seen take hold since the recession: Shoppers are doing their research before they make it to the mall, and so by the time they get there, they know exactly what they want.
  • For all the time we spend on social media, it’s not doing much to drive sales. According to Custora, whose software is used by many retailers, sites such as Facebook , Pinterest, Twitter and Instagram drove a meager 1.7 percent of total online sales on Black Friday.
    • http://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/16/this-holiday-season-is-online-tipping-point-andreessen-vc.html
Customer Engagement: It Takes A Network – http://www.innovativeretailtechnologies.com/doc/e-commerce-in-executing-on-the-customer-engagement-0001
That customer engagement is cited as the top priority for 2016 comes as no surprise, but securing investment in something so broadly defined presents a challenge. Defining the term in the context of your business and pinpointing customer engagement goals is paramount; simply being seen by customers is far different from being engaged with them, and that’s true in any channel. Building customer engagement requires a concerted effort that aligns merchandising, inventory, assortment, fulfillment, and stores, and it further requires an extension of that coordinated effort to all touch points, including email, mobile CRM, stores, call centers, and social media initiatives.

Building customer engagement is predicated on the effective measurement of tactical initiatives at each touch point, which collectively roll up into an opportunity to continuously improve the overarching engagement strategy. In practice, customer engagement metrics should include customer-level analysis of:

  • Frequency and duration of site visits
  • Repeat visitors
  • Recency of visits
  • Depth of visit (percent of site visited)
  • Click-through rate
  • Sales
  • Lifetime value
  • RSS feed subscriptions
  • Bookmarks, tags, and ratings
  • Inquiries
  • Provision of personal information
  • Downloads
  • Content syndication
  • Customer reviews
  • Social posts, comments, and trackbacks
  • Inventory Visibility. Consider that just one year ago, when we asked our survey participants if their companies had inventory visibility across all channels, fewer than 50 percent said yes. When we asked that question this year, the figure leapt to nearly 62 percent. That momentum continues and evolves. Inventory visibility is the precursor to order management, and those are retailers’ top-two supply chain spending initiatives for 2016. More than 34 percent of retailers intend to spend on solutions that improve inventory management through better visibility, and more than a third will invest in order management/fulfillment solutions.
  • The Cloud. When we asked retailers if they were actively moving apps to the cloud last year, fewer than 37 percent said yes. Today, that figure approaches 52 percent (see figure 2). What’s more, when we asked the open ended question, “What was the best systems or operations decision your company made this year?”, transitioning applications to the cloud led the response count, followed closely by inventory visibility and fulfillment initiatives and mobile device deployment. The aversion to cloud is clearly dissipating, in no small part because cloud application delivery is increasingly being realized as the conduit to realtime enterprisewide data access. That’s a necessity of inventory visibility and an enabler of order management. But there is still some aversion to overcome, and it’s decidedly security-related. Among the nearly 17 percent of respondents who disagreed with the statement, “My company is actively moving applications to the cloud,” nearly 68 percent cited security concerns.
  • The Store. Merchants are extending digital channels to the store at a feverish pace. Mobile POS hardware is the top storelevel hardware-spending priority for 2016, with 35 percent indicating investments there in 2016. That was the case heading into 2013, 2014, and 2015 as well
  • Store-level software spending will focus on wireless networking in 2016 as a third of retailers invest in their store networks. The fact that wireless networking and Wi-Fi (more than 31 percent) are the top software priorities for stores heading into the new year is a product of the digital transformation happening
  • Digital signage slides in at a close second in the most sought-after instore hardware contest, with more than 31 percent of retailers planning to invest there this year.
  • Marketing and operations teams are pushing the same agenda — in 2016, customer experience management is job No. 1 for them, as more than 43 percent of their ranks will work to ensure the aforementioned plumbing (inventory visibility, order management, wireless) is leaking no data when the omni-channel customer hits the store.
    • [post getting the assortment right] In 2016, what marketing and operations solutions does your company plan to invest in?
      Asked about their marketing and operations spending intentions in 2016, our audience of retail executives indicated that e-commerce-specific initiatives are the clear frontrunners. More than 43 percent cite customer engagement as their top priority, followed by email marketing and social media marketing at 40.65 percent and 38.85 percent, respectively [http://www.innovativeretailtechnologies.com/doc/e-commerce-in-executing-on-the-customer-engagement-0001]
  • LP/AP Priorities Follow Omni-Channel Initiatives. For the first time in the history of our survey, video surveillance has been dethroned as the top spending priority cited by LP/AP professionals. In fact, payment security charged ahead of video surveillance, with more than 35 percent indicating it’s their top security priority for 2016. Further evidence can be found in the fact that online/card-not-present payment applications rounded out the top three initiatives of LP/AP departments. This big shift in LP/AP priorities is a reflection of the October 2015 EMV liability shift, which fell directly on the heels of our survey period.
  • Legacy Systems, Excessive Integration Remain The Bad And The Ugly. When we asked retail executives about the worst decisions they’ve seen made this year — by their own company or by another — legacy systems maintenance and either excessive integration or a lack of integration due to systems incompatibility were the prevailing themes. These leading challenges only support the argument for centralized, single-source enterprise data that can be accessed by multiple applications at any location and in any channel. Those merchants investing in omni-channel infrastructures that enable digital transformation at the mobile, application level — beyond the four walls of stores, distribution centers, and call centers — are mitigating customer experience issues and cutting business inefficiencies off at the pass. To consumers, it might not be happening fast enough, but it’s incumbent on retailers to balance consumer urgency with sound, methodical store-level investment.
  • Who Responded To The Survey? 7-Eleven, Bloomingdale’s, Cavender’s, CVS, Dollar General, Estee Lauder, Hallmark, JCPenney, Kroger, Luxottica, MidwayUSA, Orvis, Panera, Plow & Hearth, Ross Stores, Sports Authority, Sprint, Victoria’s Secret, Wakefern, Walgreen’s, Walmart

IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Retail 2016 Predictions– Predictions Highlights [http://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/console/EventConsoleNG.jsp?uimode=nextgeneration&eventid=1037689]

  1. By 2016, 75% of born digital retailers don’t even consider omni-channel commerce platforms that aren’t cloud based and fundamentally mobile.
  2. By 2018 recommendation engines and forecasting will converge on personalization and machine learning, creating a foundation for substantive collaboration among merchandizing and digital marketing.
  3. By 2017, 85% of customers expect one click away commerce and fulfillment from all retailers, and those retailers will beat peer revenue growth by 200 basis points.
  4. By 2017, 90% of the top 100 global retailers will have enabled multi-factor payment authentication in store, with NFC, finger prints and contactless payments playing major roles.
  5. By 2017, digitized “brick & mortar” stores will provide retailers with new sources of data to convert 50% of shoppers from casual to loyal purchasers through digital experiences.
  6. By 2018, 40% of the top 100 global retailers will encrypt all customer data in flight and at rest, declaring “Trusted Data Certification”, with a 25% gain in competitive wallet share.
  7. By 2017, fully integrated omni-commerce platforms get selected 2X more than platforms that require “custom” integration between store, online and mobile commerce capabilities.
  8. By 2018, operationalizing omni-channel will require omni-channel commerce, IoT and social convergence, and retail laggards will close 10X more stores than competitors to stay in business.
  9. By 2017, the next wave of omni-channel retailers invest in fulfillment “your” way, driving dozens of tier 1 & 2 retailers to make new supply chain analytics, planning and execution investments.
  10. In 2016 ten large retailers will complement advanced “inside-out” assortment planning with “outside-in” customer and competitor insight to exploit gaps in competitors’ assortments, catch emerging trends, and set higher opening price points.

IDC Drivers for Retail

  • Accelerating Business Disruption from Digital Transformation
  • An Interconnected, Informed, Interactive, Intrusive, Intelligent & Cognitive Ecosystem
  • Cloud Life – The Merging of Real Life with Digital Identity
  • Slow Sales Growth, Overstored Categories, Price Deflation; Convenience as Affordable Luxury
  • Ubiquitous Omni-channel / O2O Expectation, But Limited Data, Tech, and Process Integration
  • Expanding Consumer Privacy and Data Security Concerns
  • Confidence in Cloud Crosses Chasm
 
IoT & RFID Highlights
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Posted On : Published By : Shawn Harris
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The 2015 Top Ten Programming Languages – IEEE Spectrum

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programminglanguagesiStockphoto57301224-1436903428324

What are the most popular programming languages? The only honest answer: It depends. Are you trying to land a job at a hot mobile app startup, model electricity flows across a continent, or create an electronic art project? Languages are tools, and what’s a “must have” in one domain can be a “whatever” in another. So for the second year in a row, IEEE Spectrum has teamed up with computational journalist Nick Diakopoulos to give you a popularity ranking that you can adjust to meet your own needs. Read More:  http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/the-2015-top-ten-programming-languages

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Posted On : Published By : Shawn Harris