Data & Analytics

Accenture has signed on as the title sponsor for the Retail Cyber Intelligence Summit, which will be held in Chicago, October 3 - 4, 2017. The event is sponsored by the Retail Cyber Intelligence Sharing Center (R-CISC).   

Retail today isn’t for the faint-hearted. A recent quote from business magnate and investor Warren Buffet is quite telling, “I think retailing is just too tough for me, just generally.”   

A tech-savvy retailer with an unusual business model is expanding its brick-and-mortar footprint nationally.    b8ta announced plans to open four new stores, designed by Gensler, with locations in San Francisco, San Jose, Calif. (Santana Row), Houston (Galleria), and New York City. The expansion, which brings the company's total store count to nine, kicks off with the opening of a store in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood on Sept. 29.  

More and more Americans plan to get an early start on their holiday shopping. And they also plan on spending more.    Nearly half (45%) of Americans plan to start holiday shopping before November, with one in four starting before October, according to RetailMeNot's 2017 Holiday Retail Trends and Guide. Retailers are capitalizing on this earlier start: Nearly 80% indicated they will begin holiday marketing efforts earlier this year.   

Black Friday is still No. 1 when it comes to setting sales records.   Black Friday, which falls on Nov. 24 this year, will be the busiest digital shopping day in U.S. history, exceeding Cyber Monday (Nov. 27) for the second year in a row, according to a report by Salesforce.  

Walgreens is relying on data analytics to ensure all of its IT systems are working as efficiently as possible.   Through a partnership with IBM, the drugstore chain is taking steps to drive more IT support across its enterprise. The first step is to integrate hardware and software from different vendors under one roof. This centralization will make it easier to stay abreast of performance.