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...
In retail technology today, security is a chief concern, and CIOs are exploring any and all options—including a psychological approach for weeding out would-be thieves.
No issue generates as much concern—if not outright panic—as does security.Read more...
Today's retail payment space is ripe for radical change, says the CIO for Morgan Stanley's Discover Financial Services Inc. unit. And when radical change happens, it can shake up an industry, and market leaders can find themselves in a market that is much less friendly than before. "I've never seen so much change in a particular space at any one point in time. In Europe, there is a movement mandating the use of chip cards and PINs," said Diane Offereins, Discover's CIO and executive vice president. Read more...
What do you do if you're a struggling second-tier credit card company and your main advantage is offering lower prices to retailers? One approach is to position yourself as more convenient and more modern than your competitors and to focus on places that your rivals don't dominate. That's a big part of the strategy behind Discover Financial Services Inc.'s sudden embrace of biometric technology, according to CIO Diane Offereins. Read more...
Putting control of checkout into the hands of the consumer is nightmarishly frightening for many retail executives—including that part where the consumers figure out how much money they are going to give the retailer. "Loss Prevention would love to have security gates and frisking" at the self-service terminals, said Dusty Lutz, the FastLane product manager for NCR Corp., who added that such requests are clearly not practical. "How much do you put into a system for security?" 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...
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
