In an attempt to fend off retail moves from SAP AG, PeopleSoft Inc. and JDA Software Group Inc. announced an alliance that they said better serves retailers. Under the deal, the companies will integrate PeopleSoft's Enterprise Financial Management with JDA's Portfolio Merchandise Management. The move followed PeopleSoft's alliance with IBM. Read more...
An oft-heard complaint about retail CRM programs is that they are a waste of money when—as happens frequently—the retailer never uses them to connect with customers or even uses individualized information at all. The naysayers who said privacy resistance could backfire were given a lot of ammunition when $40 billion grocery giant Albertsons was sued for trying to make money off of those CRM names. Read more...
With PDAs and cell phones getting more advanced, one retail transaction vendor wants to turn those consumer gadgets into two-way, advertisement-friendly checkout devices.
A major roadblock for razor-thin-margin retailers adopting new checkout and loyalty programs is the cost of buying the many new pieces of hardware, plus the cost of integrating the software into legacy POS (point-of-sale) systems. Read more...
When Toys "Were" Us announced that it was going to abandon the toy business, the toy chain was widely seen as another victim of Wal-Mart. But the truth is, the move stemmed from the company's own inability to use technology to get closer to customers.
The traditional fear of technology is that it replaces people and makes business transactions more impersonal. Anyone who has gotten locked into a battle of voice-mail prompts—furiously hitting "0" and "#" in a futile effort to break through to a person—understands the frustrations of automated responses. Read more...
To persuade customers to give up data, some retailers are considering using blind-taste-test third parties. At the very heart of any robust retail CRM system are the benefits consumers—and retailers—receive when the retailer knows as much about a customer as possible. But what happens when the customer doesn't want such an intimate relationship? Read more...
Pity the poor retail CIO who is a CRM advocate. In acts of backstabbing betrayals worthy of the ancient Roman coliseum, our hero finds himself having to deal with a host of villains: Overzealous software sales reps, who conveniently forget to mention the money and person-hours the retailer will have to spend to make the CRM deliver. Installing—and, from the rep's perspective, paying for—the package is only one-fiftieth of the battle. Read more...
Shoppers in the 2004 holiday season were going to face a blizzard of next-generation kiosks, about three times as many of the devices as they saw in 2003, said a report from analyst firm Frost & Sullivan.
The report cames as retailers learned that it's better to give than to receive, especially when CRM (customer relationship management) and self-service are involved.Read more...
To companies trying to understand and predict customer behavior, the Web promised the kind of information of which marketing dreams are made. The Web can electronically track every customer's action and make some very good guesses about their thoughts. For instance, are buyers just looking at products that are blue and green? How many seconds did they spend looking at a particular product? Read more...
The good news for the director of manufacturing at Campbell Soup Company is that he had discovered the potential ROI of an integrated business analytics program. The bad news is that it took a multi-million-dollar loss to make the case. The story was published in Consumer Goods Technology magazine. To read the full story, please click here.…
The CIO of Limited Brands–which includes Victoria’s Secret, Bath & Body Works, Express, Lerner New York, The Limited, Henri Bendel, The White Barn, Candle Co., and Aura Science–has heard a lot of conventional wisdom about datawarehouse strategy. Sometimes, the unconventional wisdom is best. As published in Retail Information Systems (RIS) News. To read the full story, please click here.…
The CFO at Eddie Bauer’s knew an irrestible offer when he heard one. The IT executive who was trying to justify a major CRM expenditure offered to slash the marketing budget to cover the full cost of the CRM package. Published in Retail Information Systems (RIS) News. To read the full story, please click here.…
Cards issued by European banks when used online cross border don't usually support AVS checks. So, when a European card is used with a billing address that's in the US, an ecom merchant wouldn't necessarily know that the shipping zip code doesn't match the billing code.
-Marc
