Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

A third definition for "POS" is two too many for this columnist. Beware the ides of DEC. The high-tech industry in general—and retail IT is certainly no exception—loves acronyms. The more obtuse, the better. Engineers, designers and programmers come up with them because it's fun. Marketing execs use them to simultaneously impress and baffle customers. And PR people use them because ... well ... the young ones don't know any better. Read more...

When Oracle bought retail-software specialist Retek, it learned a $670-million lesson about the new importance of retail software and its own inadequacies on the POS front. According to SEC filings as well as interviews with executives, attorneys and consultants on both sides of the battle, the battle for control of Retek Inc. was inadvertently influenced more by PeopleSoft than anything else.Read more...

When the $10 billion 1,000-store Winn-Dixie grocery chain went Chapter 11 (bankruptcy reorganization), the initial employee reaction was shock. But the chain's CIO said the secondary reaction was a remarkable focus on core business issues, including the strategic use of technology. Read more...

When customers step into a cab from the Hello Taxi company in Brookline, Mass., they don't have to worry about fumbling in their pockets for cash, or about swiping their credit card in a moving vehicle, or even about finding their wireless fob to wave in front of a reader. To pay and tip the driver, passengers just say the last four digits of their cell phones, and then they can run. Read more...

Large retail chains have always had a healthy dose of a shell game in their heritage, exemplified by the highly marketed new larger bottle of shampoo and the much higher, entirely unmarketed price tag that goes with it. A price increase by any other name still delivers fewer hair washes per dollar. When it comes to retail technology, it seems those habits are hard to break. Read more...

The 1,200-store Ritz Camera chain wants to let customers drop off film without having to slow down and thinks RFID-enabled contactless payments are picture perfect. With competitors including Wal-Mart moving in, this specialty retailer is stressing expertise and getting people in and out quickly.

Vice President of Information Systems Bob O'Hern (Ritz doesn't have a CIO, but he acts in that capacity) said he likes the RFID capabilities within a contactless payment system, but doesn't yet see its value in his supply chain. Read more...

As Oracle and SAP engage in their half-billion battle for who will takeover retail software vendor Retek, the most obvious reasons for the fight are not the true ones.

The biggest news this month in retail has been the battle between $9 billion SAP and $3 billion Oracle to take over retail software vendor Retek, which had barely $174 million in revenue last year and less than $7.7 million of profit. But that's pretty good compared with the prior year, when it lost a little more than $20 million. Read more...

As far as the retail customers of Retek are concerned, the current battle between Oracle and SAP for control of the Minneapolis retail technology firm would be better won by Oracle, according to an analyst report published Wednesday by the Aberdeen Group. Read more...

With causes ranging from new, low-priced vendors to needing more lanes open simultaneously, IHL Consulting Group reported that prices for typical point-of-sale base units in North America plummeted, from about $2,200 in 2002 to $950 in 2004.Read more...

In the middle of Albuquerque, N.M., sits a 170,000-square-foot chunk of land that is slated to be the site for a new kind of retail store: one where customers can buy a week's worth of groceries without ever having to set foot outside their car.

On paper—and, thus far, that's the only place this grocery store exists—this proposal seems to have plenty to offer both retailers and customers. Read more...

Under The Damned-If-You-Do category, Best Buy in-store Web displays seem to show different pricing. It's innocuous, but it shows why regional pricing may no longer be worth the effort.

Sometimes, pushing the technology envelope is simply not worth it. The thought leaders tend to get criticized for the flaws of the new approach and, if it does take hold, they rarely get the credit years later for having taken the chance. Read more...

As Chinese consumers suddenly start to embrace the retail store, orders for point of sale systems are soaring, according to a study from IHL Consulting Group. IHL projected China's accelerating 20 percent annual growth in 2004 would catapult it in 2005 beyond the POS sales of Germany, which is Europe's largest POS market. Read more...

Are "smart-carts" state-of-the-art and cutting edge for retail technology? It's a matter of perspective. Compared with the best European and Asian retail chains, American retailers are electronic laggards, especially in the grocery segment.

Even compared with U.S. retail technology discussions, these carts are merely deploying and productizing capabilities that have been publicly discussed for more than a year. But compared with what is actually being used—and even offered—with today's American grocery retailers, these Fujitsu carts are positively Jetsons. Read more...

Credit card companies, through consumer promotions and lower fees for retailers, have been whittling away at the last few cash-friendly refuges.

And as though George Washington needed even more disrespect to be heaped upon his picture on the one-dollar-bill, contactless payment systems are now helping to take the green out of greenbacks. Read more...

Controlling how people listen to a song on a CD is as easy as humming compared with controlling how 70,000 people every day navigate an e-commerce site, executives at Tower Records have discovered. Like every other e-commerce outfit, Tower's Web team makes a long list of assumptions about how people will interact with the site right before launching a new site capability. Those assumptions are often wrong because, among other reasons, the thinking process of a Web developer/designer doesn't always mesh with the thoughts of the site's visitors.Read more...

As retailers prepare to migrate from bar codes to RFID, upgrade POS systems and accept wireless input from a wide range of new payment devices, it's critical that they know that data points mean the exact same thing at all points on the supply chain. With that goal in mind, a key retail technology standards group unveiled a series of new schemas for retail pricing data consistency. Read more...

A hungry consumer pulls up to the drive-through window in a California McDonald's restaurant and places a dinner order. The person taking the order points out that the caller placed only three drink orders for four dinners and reminds the diner of a special that day on apple pie.

This might be a fairly typical fast-food—or, in industry parlance, QSR for quick-service restaurant—exchange were it not for the fact that the customer and the order-taker are dozens of miles apart, connected through a VPN-secured voice-over-IP hookup. Read more...

Speaking to an overflow crowd at the National Retail Federation's Redefining Retail show, Metro Group CIO Zygmunt Mierdorf beamed in live footage of the company's prototype RFID-enabled stores from Germany, showing interactive changing rooms that make clothing recommendations and have clerks bring additional pieces, a cashier shelf that instantly scans items (so the cashier doesn't have to) and a privacy system that literally leaves the chip in the store. Read more...

When major customers walk into a Circuit City location, CIO Mike Jones wants to whisper customized sales pitches into their ears—literally. Jones's scenario is simple: As customers walk into the store, they receive a very light wireless headset. Read more...

eBay has done almost everything correctly, so it's to be expected that the Web pioneer will try to boost its margins slightly. It could issue five more price increases and it would likely still be a bargain. eBay is in a very exclusive club of the early Web innovators who have stuck to their original playbook and been true to what makes the Web powerful. This week's news that eBay is boosting some prices shouldn't be a surprise, nor should the Garage Sale Goddess' right to enhance its margins a bit. Read more...

As the retail tech industry prepared for it largest trade show, the cutting-edge nature of expected news announcements—with an emphasis on wireless, touch-screen, kiosk and PDA applications—suggested an industry that is exploring everything but committing to little. A good example of an expected alliance is one involving IBM and some 40 companies—including Cuesol, Retek, Symbol Technologies and Triversity—that will pledge support for IBM's Store Integration Framework. That program specializes in helping retailers to target and cater to local sales and promotional preferences. Read more...

Self-checkout may go down in retail history as the most secure insecure piece of technology ever. Wonder why the Wal-Mart bar-code thieves avoided self-checkout? They knew better.

The world of crime prevention is riddled with what—at first glance—seem to be contradictions, but are actually exercises in logic. Read more...

The fact that shoplifters nabbed $1.5 million across 19 states is not a technology, people or training problem. Rather, it shows that management needs to re-evaluate its obsession with keeping the line moving. The most well-planned and meticulously detailed crimes are often foiled by the commonplace. The thieves might map out their route precisely, coordinating it based on when various employees come and go. But security guard No. 9 gets a flat tire that morning, shows up 35 minutes late and ruins everything. Read more...

In a scheme that leveraged a little technology but relied on inattentive cashiers, Tennessee authorities arrested two couples on charges that they used bogus bar codes to steal at least $1.5 million from hundreds of stores—some belonging to Wal-Mart—in 19 states. Although the accused are said to have spent a lot of time and effort organizing colleagues in various parts of the country, the technology portion of their scheme was quite simple. Read more...

You're cleaning away papers that accumulated during the holidays and find a portable CD player that is identical to the one you use every day. It was given to you as a gift and you have no receipt, nor any clue where it was purchased. On a whim, you take the CD player to your favorite local retailer. Customer service scans the item, reports to you the date it was purchased and the name of the retailer it was purchased from, tells you that the other retailer's rules give you four more days to return it, and hands you a freshly printed receipt for you to use for that return. Read more...