SAP America

New York -- More than half (53%) of industry leaders believe that improving customers’ retail experience is essential to creating a successful mobile payments scheme, according to a recent survey by SAP.

The study, SAP’s third consecutive GSMA Mobile World Congress survey, found that the “secret sauce” for creating a better retail experience includes POS services such as near-field communication (28%), facilitating universal acceptance of mobile payments (25%) and location-based point-of-sale offerings (24%).

HANOVER, Germany — SAP announced that it has enhanced its OnDemand software solution to empower businesses to know their customers like never before, guide them through each step of the buyer's journey and groom customers to become loyal brand advocates. 

NEW YORK — Christian Siriano and Payless ShoeSource have teamed up to bring immediate shopper access to affordable runway fashion with the Feb. 18 availability of the LeToile, a direct-from-the-runway style featured in Siriano's show, offered at thousands of Payless stores nationwide and Payless.com for just $30.

ATLANTA — Retail merchandising solutions provider, Predictix, has named Tom Fischer managing director for Europe, Middle East and Africa. Fischer will be responsible for managing Predictix’ EMEA sales, client implementation and support activities in a growing international business.

By Mike Troy

Mobile, social, solution, cloud, big data, SaaS, optimize and engage. It was impossible to have a conversation at the National Retail Federation convention in New York without hearing these words — a lot.

New York -- SAP AG on Monday announced that Crocs Inc. is implementing the SAP Apparel and Footwear application to replace a legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

Implementation is already underway and will help give Crocs complete control of its global supply chain — from procuring raw materials to delivering finished styles across the globe.

Getting closer to the customer has always been important to retailers, but never more so than it is today. Chain Store Age spoke with SAP’s Lori Mitchell-Keller about the transformational shifts that are shaking up the retail model.

All the buzz today is about how retailers need to get closer to the customer, but what exactly does it mean?

New York -- The sales figures are in for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but the numbers don’t tell the whole story. Using a sophisticated social media analytics platform, SAP tracked consumer sentiment on these critical shopping days via Facebook, Twitter and 165 million other sites across the social web to identify patterns and uncover revealing shopper insights.

View SAP’s sentiment-tracking infographic here.