Artificial Intelligence

The massive consumer technology show known as CES is underway in Las Vegas and retailers in attendance will trolling an area of the 2.4 million-sq.-ft. show floor called Eureka Park in hopes of finding the next big thing.

Lowe’s Iris brand smart home solution is gaining new security functionality for those customers willing to pay a monthly fee.

The New Year is here, and it’s time to make annual resolutions. When it comes to their IT activities, retailers should resolve to make improvements in the following three areas.

Innovation
The days of IT being responsible for “keeping the lights on” are long over. Enterprise systems are still required to perform basic but crucial tasks such as finance and HR, but any retailer looking to compete in 2016 needs to look far past the boundaries of simple task automation.

The New Year is here, and it’s time to make annual resolutions. When it comes to their IT activities, retailers should resolve to make improvements in the following three areas.

Innovation
The days of IT being responsible for “keeping the lights on” are long over. Enterprise systems are still required to perform basic but crucial tasks such as finance and HR, but any retailer looking to compete in 2016 needs to look far past the boundaries of simple task automation.

A new start-up, Optoro, is offering retailers alternative ways to sell their returned goods via a software platform that tracks returns, assesses, which channel is the most effective for each returned item, and routes products to those channels. While most retailers typically recover only about 20% to 40% of the retail cost of returned goods, Optoro helps companies recoup 50% to 70% of the cost, according to a report by the New York Times.

Smartwatch-based commerce only represents a sliver of total e-commerce, but that may soon be due for a change.

According to new research from Mintel, smartwatch sales are set to boom in the near future. While only 6% of Americans currently own a smartwatch, 21% of consumers who purchased a watch in the past 12 months say they are very interested in the smartwatch trend. And 24% of consumers have bought a watch in the past 12 months.

In the coming year, seamless technologies that blend physical and digital channels will have a major impact on e-commerce.

According to Pitney Bowes, five key developments will primarily drive e-commerce in 2016. These are:

1. Internet of Things (IoT) technologies will drive better business outcomes

Retailers just went through an increasingly digital and mobile holiday season.

According to analysis performed by the IBM Watson business intelligence platform, the average order value for the mobile and desktop shopper combined was $127.49, up 2.5% from 2014 ($124.33).

Consumers also shopped via their mobile devices in growing numbers. Mobile traffic exceeded desktop, traffic, accounting for 52% of all online traffic. This was a 17% increase in mobile traffic from 2014.