Artificial Intelligence

Wisconsin-based, 21-store grocery retailer Festival Foods takes food safety so seriously that it no longer thinks about it.

That’s because Festival Foods has chosen the food safety platform from ReposiTrak to automatically manage regulatory and business documentation compliance within its supply chain.

Online retail platform eBay Enterprise is entering a new partnership to help its retail users directly serve the needs of customers.

eBay Enterprise is teaming up with OpenSpan Inc., a provider of contact center automation and intelligence technology, to provide solutions designed to automate, simplify and integrate applications to improve the way contact center agents work.

Several retailers, including Neiman Marcus, had site issues this past Black Friday weekend. Here is some advice from the folks at Dynatrace, an application performance management software company, on the top three things retailers can do when things go bad online.

In a field rich with potential customer data, retail marketers are feeling more data-wealthy than ever as data big and small seem to rule the world. Meanwhile, though, the promise of all this data has lured more than one retailer into a frustrating marketing technology maze that didn’t pay off as planned, sending them in too many directions for too long to cost-efficiently find the customer magic they were promised.

In a new video, Amazon.com is previewing what it calls the future of retail.

Amazon demonstrates a new drone model which will allow delivery of certain items within 30 minutes or less. The drone rises vertically like a helicopter to an altitude of almost 400 feet, and then can fly like a plane for a distance of about 15 miles.

Information technology outsourcing (ITO), or the strategic hosting and management of technology solutions, services and personnel by a third-party provider, is a popular way for retailers to quickly increase their technological capabilities, and also lower their IT-related capital expenditure.

Jeff Seabloom, managing director at Dallas-based global advisory firm Alsbridge Inc., spoke with Chain Store Age about three trends he sees having a major impact on retail ITO in 2016.

As we begin 2016, supermarket retailers continue to adapt to changing consumer demands, industry issues and regulations affecting their businesses. Some grocers are expanding their footprints, others are narrowing to specialty formats, and some seem to be doing both. All are facing increased competition and high expectations around freshness, convenience and transparency.

Chain Store Age recently spoke with Kyle Nel, executive director of Lowe’s Innovation Labs, who discussed the mission and activities of the retailer’s proprietary technology development center.