Business Intelligence (BI)

The biggest news at the International Home and Housewares Show didn’t involve a new product introduction, but rather an information sharing arrangement between The NPD Group and Nielsen that will help retailers and supplier make sense of the market.

New York -- Installing traffic counters and collecting traffic data is easy. But turning the data into better business results is challenging for even the best retailers. Register now for Chain Store Age’s Webinar, “Three Ways to Get the Most Out of Traffic & Conversion Programs,” which will be held on Wednesday, April 1, at 2 p.m. EST.

Four metatrends are reshaping the industry

Technology evolves to let smaller stores maximize energy savings

Dhiraj Jain, business development head of retail products and IP for global IT services, consulting and business solutions organization Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), recently took some time to explain exactly how the POS is evolving into a full-fledged omnichannel commerce platform.

How has the role of the point of sale (POS) evolved over the years?

A traditional POS is no longer sufficient to fulfill demands of the modern retailer.

McHenry, Ill. – Specialty toner retailer/franchisor Cartridge World has created a unified shopping experience across multiple devices, establishing an automated fulfillment workflow, as well as integrating e-commerce into the franchise business model. Working with Web development company Devbridge Group, Cartridge World launched a responsive design-based e-commerce site that offers the same intuitive shopping process across all platforms.

Phoenix – Net income at PetSmart inc. inched up 0.4% to a better-than-expected $132.1 million in the fourth quarter, up from $131.5 million in year-ago period. One-time costs associated with profit improvement and the company’s pending $8.7 billion sale to investment firm BC Partners, announced in December 2014, prevented net income from growing further.

Net sales increased 6% to $1.9 billion, from $1.81 billion. Same-store sales growth, including sales from online websites, rose 2.6%.

Hangzhou, China - Aliyun, Alibaba’s cloud computing business, is opening its first overseas data center, in California’s Silicon Valley, in what seems to be a competitive move into the space currently dominated by Amazon Web Services. The center will initially target Chinese enterprises based in the United States with the plan to gradually expand its products and services to international clients in the second half of this year.

Nottingham, U.K. – IBM Inc. is expanding the IBM MobileFirst for iOS portfolio of apps for retailers. Boots U.K. and American Eagle Outfitters are among the retailers who have signed on for MobileFirst apps.

Portland, Ore. -- Only 18% of retail IT security professionals expressed concerned that point of sale devices were being targeted by cyber criminals, and only 20% were “confident” that point of sale devices were securely configured, according to a study by Tripwire examining the impact of emerging enterprise security threats connected with the Internet of Things (IoT) in the retail industry.