Artificial Intelligence

Trying to picture how home improvements will look in your mind’s eye can be tough, and Lowe’s is using emerging technology to expand the view.

Kyle Nel, executive director of Lowe’s Innovation Labs, recently told Chain Store Age how retailer’s proprietary technology development center is developing an app for the new Project Tango virtual reality (VR) mobile platform. Jointly created by Google and computer technology company Lenovo, Project Tango provides mobile devices with spatial capabilities.

Retailers still working on compliance with the EMV chip-based card payment standard have a new technology option.

Verifone is partnering with Microsoft to provide comprehensive EMV-ready payment as a service solutions certified for Microsoft Dynamics AX for retail and commerce solutions.

The offering bundles payment hardware, software and support services into a single integrated solution, enabling retailers to centrally manage their entire payment system.

Dick’s Sporting Goods is applying advanced analytics to better understand what products it should sell, and at what cost.

Dick’s is partnering with predictive analytics solutions provider First Insight, to help make faster and more accurate decisions in the areas of product design, merchandise buying and pricing decisions on thousands of goods and designs.

Shoptalk is out to break the mold of what constitutes a retail industry event and the clearest indication of that philosophy is a digital brochure that showcases an expanding roster of speakers and the image of a monkey sitting on a toilet. Seriously.
 

Oracle is introducing Oracle Retail 15, an enterprise retail suite that includes diverse features such as new cloud-based applications and POS hardware solutions.

In the cloud area, Oracle is adding four new retail-specific services.

• Using Oracle Retail Sales and Productivity Cloud Service, retailers can gain real-time insights into comparative sales, salesperson productivity, merchandise productivity, store sales, and store traffic.

For millennials it’s little more than legend, but the dotcom crash of the early 2000s was a very real event for any retail IT professionals of the Gen X or Baby Boomer demographics.

As retailers prepare to kick off the technology conference/user group season with the upcoming NRF “Big Show,” it might be a good idea to review a few lessons from that era about how to properly evaluate vendors and solutions.

A Shaky Investment

Mall operator General Growth Properties (GGP) is looking to get in touch with customers in a new and very personal way.

GGP has selected Mobiquity to be the provider of beacon-based advertising services for select malls in its U.S. portfolio, including Tysons Galleria (Washington D.C.), Glendale Galleria (Los Angeles), Water Tower Place (Chicago) and Ala Moana Center (Honolulu).

The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas has wound down, and senior Target executives are sharing their thoughts on the retailer's official blog, A Bullseye View. CEO Brian Cornell, chief marketing officer Jeff Jones and chief strategy and innovation officer Casey Carl shared insights on hot topics from the event, such as personalization, wearable devices and the Internet of Things (IoT). [A Bullseye View]