Artificial Intelligence

About a year ago, I wrote a TechBytes column about a concept app called “Snap", which SAP had developed to provide consumers with interactive instructions for assembling products at home. After some fine-tuning, SAP is now officially launching a DIY home assembly app called “Bilt” for Android and iOS tablet devices.   

By John M. Pierre, Linguastat    The single greatest challenge that retailers face today is to have an individualized “conversation” with each customer and to do so on a global scale. Consumers expect a similar personalized experience regardless of channel, from the marketing offers they receive to the products that appear in search results.  

Atlanta –- In addition to obtaining data from 56 million payment cards between April and Sept. 2014, hackers who infiltrated the network of The Home Depot Inc. also obtained the email addresses of 53 million customers.   In a statement on its website, the retailer said the files containing the email addresses, which were separate from the payment card files, did not contain passwords or other sensitive information, but customers should still be on guard against phishing scams.

New York -- Amazon has quietly launched another hardware device, a  voice-recognition device called Echo that doubles as a high-tech music speaker. The 9-inch tall cylinder device sells for $199 but is available for $99 for a limited time to Prime members. It is designed around the user’s voice, which it can hear from across a room.   

London, U.K. -- Analytics will be applied in front-end as well as back-end applications in retail. According to a new study from Frost & Sullivan, the aim of every retailer is to integrate data from multiple channels to provide an omnichannel experience for the customer.  

Robert Bacchi, Choice Logistics’ SVP of information systems has been named the company’s EVP and chief information officer. Bacchi will continue to report to Michael Katz, CEO of Choice.

Newtown Square, Penn. –- SAP has released the Bilt mobile app, which provides interactive, 3D, voice-guided assembly, repair and installation instructions in application for iOS and Android tablets. Bilt digitally enables consumers to find the product best fit for them and assemble it as quickly and easily as possible.   

 

Retailers are well aware that good lighting is critical to visually rendering and calling attention to merchandise, including the role of color rendering. Light is made up of colors. For us to see an object as blue, that color must be present in the object and the light itself.

Most electric white-light sources don’t produce light with a balanced color spectrum, however. They’re manufactured with varying relative intensities of colors. This choice provides control of color appearance of the light source and how objects in the space appear.