Business Intelligence (BI)

By Jon Winsett, NPI

As we barrel towards the holiday season, few retail IT executives have as much time as they’d like to work on the challenges that will be waiting for them in first quarter 2015 — including limited funding for IT innovation. Retailers are projected to spend more in the coming year, but nearly three-quarters of that budget will be committed to maintaining the status quo. That leaves little to fund game-changing new IT initiatives that can drive competitive advantage, customer loyalty and profits.

Franklin, Tenn. -- Software companies Square and Epicor lead the fast growing Mobile POS software market in North America according to new research from IHL Group, a global retail research and advisory firm.  

Mobile POS installs are expected to grow by 110% this year as more retailers replace electronic cash registers and POS terminals with mobile devices.

Neuhausen, Switzerland -- Tyco Retail Solutions has announced positive results from its RFID pilot with Chico’s FAS. With focus on evolving its omnichannel retailing strategy, Chico’s partnered with Tyco to address inventory accuracy and visibility challenges in 13 Soma Intimates pilot locations.

Mount Laurel, N.J. -- Agilence announced that Coborn's will deploy the Retail 20/20 exception reporting solution to reduce shrink and improve in-store operations.

Montreal -- Raymark said that select members of the Luxury Jewelers Resource Group (LJRG) have selected Raymark's end-to-end suite of solutions for point-of-sale (including mobile), clienteling, merchandising, replenishment, open-to-buy planning, purchasing, repairs, reporting and analytics.

The Raymark banners include Fink’s Jewelers, Hamilton Jewelers, Hyde Park Jewelers, Lee Michaels Fine Jewelry, London Jewelers, Lux Bond & Green, Tapper’s Diamond & Fine Jewelry, Tivoli and Traditional Jewelers.

Alburtsland, Denmark – Danish grocery retailer Coop Denmark A/S is implementing the Galleria Retail Technology Solutions Behavioral Cluster Planner. Coop Denmark will use Galleria’s behavioral clustering solution to understand how categories are being shopped.

San Francisco – Acromobile, a provider of SaaS mobile engagement software, and Bitnet, provider of a digital commerce platform for processing Bitcoin payments, are integrating Acromobile Payments with Bitnet’s platform to offer merchants the ability to accept Bitcoin payments. Acromobile Payments with Bitcoin acceptance is available to any merchant as a fully integrated Order-to-Bitcoin-to-Cash solution with integration to leading CRM and ERP systems.

Chico’s is looking to evolve its omnichannel retailing strategy, and to that end, has partnered with Tyco, a leading global provider of retail performance and security tools and technology, to address inventory accuracy and visibility challenges in 13 Soma Intimates pilot stores.

Tyco's RFID-based Inventory Intelligence tool is designed to enable store assistants to access accurate, real-time inventory information in one place to better manage their deep merchandise assortment and to drive increased sales and shopper satisfaction, according to the company.

New York – Coach Inc. has leveraged the MicroStrategy Analytics Platform and MicroStrategy Mobile to produce automated reporting that provides anytime, anywhere visibility down to the store level. Coach has built an interactive mobile application using MicroStrategy Mobile that provides its retail teams with the ability to examine sales trends for any given geography, including at the individual store level, with a swipe or tap on their iPad devices.

Coach is using the MicroStrategy Analytics Platform and MicroStrategy Mobile to build an interactive mobile app that provides its retail teams with the ability to examine sales trends for any given geography, including at the individual store level, with a swipe or tap on their iPad devices.