Artificial Intelligence

Plug and Play brings together retailers and start-ups that offer specific technology and expertise that can relieve merchants’ pain points. Chain Store Age’s Customer Disruption newletter provides a Q&A with the CEO of one of those companies in each issue. This time, the spotlight is on John McIntyre of Sightly.   What does Sightly do?  

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.  

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.   

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.

 

The POS landscape is rapidly changing due to the emergence of disruptive technologies, such as self-checkout, mobile devices and pay by touch. However, the traditional hardware-based approach to POS is still alive and well, and should be for the foreseeable future.

 

The U.S. Department of Energy has named the ASHRAE/IES 90.1-2013 energy standard as the new national energy reference standard, superseding the 2010 version in effect until then.

Within two years, all states must put into effect a commercial building energy code at least as stringent as the 2013 version of 90.1, or justify why they cannot comply.

The updated standard pays particular attention to lighting controls, with more stringent requirements, including*: