Artificial Intelligence

The fuel retail industry may innovate at a snail’s pace, but Shell Retail is bucking the trend.

Following a year-long proof-of-concept, the gasoline and convenience store retailer is embarking on an iPad-based point-of-sale (POS) deployment at dedicated locations. The robust cloud-based system is designed to centrally manage fuel stations and markets more effectively; ensure compliance with data security standards, and most importantly, improve the customer experience through the point-of-purchase.

Chipotle Mexican Grill is going to test delivering burritos by drones.
 
The Mexican fast-casual brand has teamed up with Project Wing, a unit of Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc., to deliver the items to a select group of students and employees at Virginia Tech, USA Today reported.

The test will last a few weeks, the report said, with the drones delivering the food with a winch.  

Retail success is based on a blend of art and science. Office Depot is such an advocate that it is expanding its use of customer insights and dedication to customer science.  

In the lead-up to this year’s holiday season, retailers across the country are already making important preparations in the hopes of increasing sales, improving customer service, and preventing data breaches. This last concern carries with it a heavy price tag; according to a survey from the Ponemon Institute, the average cost of holiday season cyber attacks is $8,000 per minute or nearly half-a-million dollars per hour.   

Eloquii, a fast-growing, plus-size women’s fashion apparel manufacturer and online-only player, has expanded its executive team with two experienced retailers.    The retailer named Michael Concannon as chief technology officer. He most recently served as CTO of Quidsi, an Amazon-owned e-commerce company where he oversaw long-term technical strategy and maintained technical leadership for the entire platform of six sites including diapers.com.    

Johnson Controls has completed its merger with Tyco.   By uniting Johnson Controls, a leading provider of building efficiency solutions with Tyco, a leading provider of fire and security solutions, the new company is positioned as a leader in products, technologies and integrated solutions for the buildings and energy sectors.   

MoneyGram and Walmart on Tuesday announced the launch of a new state-of-the-art online money transfer platform that offers customers new features and a streamlined experience when sending money through <a href="http://walmart.moneygram.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; max-height: 100000px; color: rgb(0, 83, 160); text-decoration: none; border: 0px; outline: none; font-family: open_sansregular, Arial, Helvetica, sans

Walmart is eliminating about 7,000 back-office positions at its U.S. stores, with the majority of the cuts in the accounting and invoicing areas.     The move, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, follows a test earlier this summer at 500 stores in the West to cut three administrative accounting and invoicing jobs at each store.