Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

Retail software sales last year were $7.3 billion, with a compound annual growth rate of 7 percent through 2011, "catapulting the market to $10.4 billion," the report said. Read more...

Almost 90 percent of recently surveyed retailers required suppliers to use advance shipping notices, but found the ASN accuracy to be weak. “As a result, compliance-related deductions are higher around ASNs than any other supply chain document,” according to this powerful RetailWire story.

The story attributed the problems to a large number of purchase order changes, a lack of standards, EDI not being tied into E-Commerce, inadequate funding and a lack of measurement metrics. The comments are quite interesting, too.…

For years, American technology leaders have gotten used to seeing the U.S. no longer globally technologically dominant. But nowhere is that lack-of-dominance more pronounced than with cellphone technology. That's why I saw this week's Google Android news as something that was exciting in its potential to shake the industry up. Trust me: this is one sector that truly needs a lot of shaking up. Read more...

The streaming video of a rehearsal show that Target is sending around is more bizarre than anything else. If the intent is to focus on the clothes, this Target-supplied video seems to miss the point, as even the highbandth-version shows very little of the clothing's detail. There's also a very good reason why top fashion models make so much money. It's the models that make the clothes look good. Read more...

With Oracle’s Fusion package barely a year away, some Oracle-ites wonder if the delivery could ever match the hype. The company has now changed lead horses, turning the delivery responsibility over to in-house code rider Thomas Kurian.

In a nicely done BusinessWeek piece on the subject, the hurdles that Kurian faces are detailed. Worth a read.…

"There has been a lot of talk about social shopping," said Patti Freeman Evans, the report's lead analyst, but that talk hasn't translated into sales. "Social and community sites still rank low in shoppers' minds as useful places to research and shop for gifts. Only three percent of users who plan to buy online this holiday season—and six percent of those in the segment who are ages 18 to 34—plan to add a wish list or gift list to their MySpace, Facebook, or similar Web site page to help their friends and family select gifts." Read more...

"its payment processing assets are no longer part of the company's core business and are being considered for sale," the newsletter report said. Read more...

"As smartcards continue to penetrate applications such as contactless payment, ticketing, security/access control, and e-government, the need to simplify interactions by reducing the overall number of smartcards used by an individual will increase," the report said. Read more...

In the reversal of age-old television advertising pricing models, Best Buy wants more money for delivering a much smaller audience. There's a logic to it. Instead of consumers sharing their private videos with the world, they'll pay a few extra dollars—Best Buy wants $7 for 100 minutes of video hosting—to exclude anyone who is not on their list.

Amazon on Thursday announced that for more than 450 of its top toys this holiday season, it will offer full videos. Read more...

New court filings on Friday also made public E-mail exchanges involving the TJX CIO, which attorneys are using to show that the retail chain knew how weak its security was right before the breach and yet allowed it to continue. Read more...

New details that emerged from documents filed in federal court Thursday include that a TJX consultant found that not only was TJX not PCI-compliant, but that it had failed to comply with nine of the 12 applicable PCI requirements. Many were "high-level deficiencies," the consultant said. Read more...

But those details have typically hinted at or suggested a wide range of security problems. After months of motions and arguments, filings have begin for the argument that frightens TJX the most: whether U.S. District Court Judge William Young will order that TJX reveal publicly exactly how it believes the breaches occurred and why they happened.Read more...

Although the numbers do show a sharp increase, they also reflect the fact that 35 percent—more than one out of every three—large retailers today are still not PCI compliant, despite the passing of the Sept. 30 deadline and the start of the promised $25,000/month fines for non-compliance.Read more...

The problem of retailers relying too much on technology and cutting off customer feedback is only half the problem. Customer service outsource companies are finding it quite easy now to interpret policies however they want and to then hide unhappy customers from their retail clients. Read more...

A consumer shopping for a home entertainment system accesses a 3-D CADCAM representation of his home and drags it to an entertainment E-Commerce site. This large digital file, however, is much more than a mere architectural depiction of the consumer's home.

It includes window placement and the times of day—during different months—that the sun shines through various windows and at roughly what intensity and for how long. Someone has entered the style of thickness of the rug and wall-coverings and a database lookup has associated those with their likely sound-dampening characteristics. Read more...

The new numbers came to light in filing from attorneys representing some of the banks now suing TJX. Read more...

"Sears and CSC have amicably settled their differences on mutually satisfactory terms, with Sears paying an undisclosed amount to CSC," said the brief statement, issued just before 10 PM (EST). Read more...

The Akamai deal is directly related to an Apple/Starbucks deal announced month, where visitors to the coffee chain will be able to download music from the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store at Starbucks using a variety of Apple hardware, including the iPod, iPhone and a Mac running iTunes. Read more...

A Home Depot manager left a laptop–with personal data on about 10,000 employees–in his car and it was stolen, Home Depot confirmed on Wednesday, according to this Associated Press story.

The laptop contained names, home addresses and Social Security numbers of certain Home Depot employees, most in the Northeast, but no customer data, the story said. …

As the legal arguments start to unfold—as they did this week in a Boston federal courtroom—there is little discussion yet about responsibility to protect cardholder data. Most of the TJX defenses seem to be variants of "Everybody was doing it, so why pick on me?" As the state trooper would reply on that New York highway, "Because you got caught." Read more...

To be certain, MasterCard, AmericanExpress and others have been active in PCI circles, but they're been quite willing to let Visa take all of the public heartaches.

Is that now changing, albeit a little bit? When the National Retail Federation came out, asking that retailers no longer be required to retain credit card data after authorization, it was MasterCard—not Visa—that issued a statement and a stinging statement it was, saying the NRF plan was "inaccurate and unjustified."Read more...

Pathmark is rolling out a branded combination loyalty and payment card, selling convenience and discounts to its customers. The catch: the combo card only offers debit payment. Read more...