Artificial Intelligence

By Kevin Smith, VP of onshore corporate services for ImpactWeather

According to Forrester Research, weather is the leading cause of business disruptions¹. From commodity demands and supply chain interruptions to community assistance, retailers know the power that severe weather has over their economic profits and losses.

Chain Store Age recently spoke with Alison Paul, vice chairman, Deloitte LLP and retail and distribution leader, about the expanding role of the CFO in retail organizations:

How has the role of the CFO in retail organizations changed?

The connected home space is getting crowded with Staples Connect, the newest platform looking to simplify peoples’ lives by putting them in constant contact with their home or business.

Boston -- Swirl Networks, provider of an enterprise-class beacon marketing platform, announced that it has entered into a strategic relationship with Motorola Solutions. The two companies will work together in the areas of product, sales and services to support iBeacon technology rollouts in large-scale retail environments.

This announcement follows the recent unveiling of Motorola's MPact Platform for Mobile Marketing, which leverages Swirl to power the beacon marketing capabilities for its indoor locationing platform.

Framingham, Mass. -- Staples is expanding its home and office automation platform, Staples Connect, including a rollout to 500 stores, new pricing for the Staples Connect Hub, and collaborations with Microsoft, Jawbone, and D-Link. Staples is also the first retailer to announce the integration of wearable technology to its platform.

Paris - Most retailers (65%) struggle with getting omnichannel commerce right and cite underperforming technology, changing IT trends and the complex organizational infrastructure as the primary reasons. According to a recent survey from Ipanema Technologies, retailers see the customer-centric experience as including excellent customer service (58%), fast transactions (55%) and interchangeable purchase channels (49%), but only 35% of respondents describe their customer experience as excellent.

Betamax. Zune. Google Plus. These are just a few consumer technology applications that hit the market with a lot of hype and all failed to catch on for the same basic reason. It seems clear that the Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader tablet can now be considered part of this list, although Barnes & Noble has not yet accepted it.

Toronto -- Twitter released a full suite of targeting, creative and measurement tools designed to enable advertisers to promote their mobile apps through the new mobile app promotion (MAP) product.