Retail self-checkout is a great way to use the technology, but retailers are giving false reasons for why they support it. When you're a retail executive in today's razor-thin-margin environment, you do what you can barely afford and then pray it supports your strategy. Pricing is no longer something most retailers can determine, as a strict competitor reality often dictates whether your per-item profit is one or two cents. Read more...
Envision opening a refrigerator, making a tuna-fish sandwich and using the last of the mayonnaise. You scan the empty jar on the freezer door for two seconds and then recycle the sticky jar.
Three days later, you walk into your local grocery store and grab a cart, which displays a list of everything you need. Some of the items came from a list you e-mailed to your store, others are things the cart thinks you're probably out of (you haven't purchased milk in two weeks and your last portion had an expiration date of eight days ago), and some are things that your refrigerator told your shopping cart about. 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...
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.…
Through decades of non-traditional decisions, Burlington Coat Factory CIO Mike Prince has defied the experts, both in terms of technology strategy and how long a CIO can hold that post with a multi-billion-dollar retail chain. Meet America’s most senior CIO. Published in Retail Information Systems (RIS) News. 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
