News

Deerfield Park, Ill. – Walgreens has entered into a multi-year agreement to provide Inovalon's data-driven encounter support platform, Electronic Patient Assessment Solution Suite (ePASS) within healthcare clinics at select Walgreens to support improvements in managed care quality and performance.

The ePASS platform allows identification and resolution of gaps in quality, care, assessment, documentation, and risk score accuracy, as well as analytical capabilities. It will be rolled out at 400 stores nationwide.

Largo, Fla. - Valpak Direct Marketing Systems, Inc. will integrate offerings of local and national coupons into Google Wallet via the Wallet Objects API. The Valpak.com “Save to Google" feature will be available for desktop and mobile web users later this week.

Pennsauken, N.J. – Becker’s School Supplies has redeveloped and relaunched its e-commerce site on the WebLinc e-commerce platform.

The WebLinc platform provides both front-end branding and back-end merchandising and management tools. Within months of launching its new site, Becker’s experienced a 120% jump in revenue compared to the same period last year and saw transaction volume increase by 81%.

By Jeff Wakefield, Verifone

Mobility. It is such a broad concept, meaning different things to merchants and consumers. Mobile acceptance, mobile payments, mobile POS, mobile shopping – each plays a distinct part in the overall mobile experience and each has different risks and rewards.

Within this larger mobile arena, the security of the mobile payment device offers the greatest risk for both merchants and consumers alike.

Camp Hill, Pa. -- Rite Aid Corp. reported that it swung to  profit in the second-quarter profit, fueled by increased sales and stronger margins. The drugstore chain raised its full-year forecast.

Rite Aid reported a profit of $32.8 million for the quarter ended Aug. 31, compared with a year-earlier loss of $38.8 million. It was the chain’s fourth-straight quarterly profit.

Sales for the quarter were $6.3 billion, up from $6.2 billion in the year ago period. Same-store sales were up by 1%,

Rite Aid reached a milestone in its store conversions and saw growth in the latest expansion to its loyalty program as it posted its fourth-consecutive profitable quarter.

During the second quarter of fiscal year 2014, the number of stores in the chain that have been converted to the Wellness and Genuine Well-Being formats surpassed the 1,000 mark, with the total number of stores converted totaling 1,019 — including 114 under the newer Genuine Well-Being format — and expected to reach 1,200 by the end of the year. 

Like other retailers, Kohl’s is preparing for the holiday shopping season and plans to hire more than 50,000 people nationwide to support business in stores and growth on Kohls.com.

Mindshare Technologies, a leading Voice of the Customer (VoC) technologies provider, has acquired Empathica, a leading global provider of social Customer Experience Management solutions. 

The acquisition establishes Mindshare as the largest VoC provider in the food services and retail industries, and will allow the company to grow aggressively in contact centers and hospitality.

The acquisition was financed in part by Sorenson Capital and Peterson Partners. Cascadia Capital served as Empathica’s financial adviser in the transaction.

Meijer announced the introduction of the mPerks Baby Rewards program, offering rewards on baby merchandise purchases, allowing customers to personalize rewards and earn $10 off their shopping purchases for every $100 they spend on items like diapers, baby wipes, training pants and toddler food. 

The retailer's expansion of the program comes soon after the number of prescribers passed 1.7 million; enrolled customers saved $25 million so far this year, with as many as 45,000 customers signing up for the program each week.

Target is launching a pilot program in Chicago designed to enhance the experience for consumers shopping for baby items.