Retail TouchPoints: 5 Key Trends From NRF Which May Separate the 'Has Beens,' the 'Survivors' & 'Thrivers'
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is an excerpt of a current article from the Retail TouchPoints website.
While retailers may have cut back and sent fewer team members to this year's NRF event, those retailers in attendance were active buyers in pursuit of solutions that could help them emerge as a company that survives and even thrives once the economy rebounds. In order to stem the current tide, most retailers in attendance were focusing on the following five key areas:
1. Efficiency/Cost Savings
The ROI that tier 1 retailers like Home Depot and Sears have realized from task management and workforce optimization has been well documented, but now more mid-sized chains are realizing the value in optimizing their workforce. For example, Books-A-Million at the NRF convention announced plans to implement the entire Reflexis Store Operations suite of integrated KPI, labor scheduling, task management, and storewalk/compliance solutions.
2. Analytics/Business Intelligence
Considering the rapid change in demand cycles, many retailers are leaning more on the dashboards, real-time alerts and other insights business intelligence and analytics solutions provide. One of the most telling examples spotlighted at NRF was Family Dollar's Project Accelerate. The deep discounter is in the midst of a three-year transformation designed to improve the shopping experience and also improve inventory productivity and enhance supply chain efficiency.
3. Customer Centricity
Every retailer claims to be customer centric, but in the current economic climate many retailers are actually putting their money and focus behind those claims. As a clear indication, a Sunday conference session entitled "Are You Truly a Customer-Centric Retailer?" drew approximately 800 attendees. Presented by DemandTec, the session introduced new research from IDC on the state of customer-centricity and insights from Best Buy and Canadian drug chain Rexall PharmaPlus.
4. Connected Channels
Retailers looking to connect disparate sales channels had several live demos on the show floor of providing the ability to allow consumers to buy from any channel and easily have that purchase fulfilled from the distribution channel of their choice. For example, Manhattan Associates showcased the integration of its Distributed Order Management (DOM) solution with WebSphere Commerce from IBM. Building a demo around their joint client David's Bridal, Manhattan and IBM demonstrated the ability for buying products online with pickup in stores, by allowing visitors at the IBM booth to order gifts such as digital photo frames from an IBM gift registry and then have that order picked up at the Manhattan Associates booth.
5. The Arrival Of Mobile Commerce
The NRF Show also featured one of the first live demos of the new Microsoft Tag short code technology. Built around a prototype retailer called Martin Blue, Escalate Retail promoted an offering for a free pair of iPod travel speakers. Retailers were invited to "snap" the tags featured in ads and post cards with their web-enabled phone and "order" the free speaker as a reward for taking part in the demo. After snapping the tag to place their order, retailers were able to stop by the Escalate booth to pick up their order and learn more about the mechanics of how the behind-the-scenes tools used to deliver the live "Buy Anywhere, Fulfill Anywhere" example.
Discussion questions: Of the tech solutions mentioned, which do you think will be most appealing to retailers in 2009? Are there others that you think will make a bigger impact?