Mobile retail – its really here

Well there has been talk about it for years. Following the rise of online retail, the next step is retail on mobile phones.  Apparently it is already widely used in Japan.

Over here retailers are just beginning to make use of the new more sophisticated mobile phones such as the iphone.  It is a tricky decision for retailers though. There is no standard technological platform as yet. Develop an app for the iphone and it won’t work on the other devices which are out there.

Retailers such as Ocado and Oasis have developed iphone apps but perhaps the most savvy approach is that being adopted by Tesco. Tesco is opening an API up to developers and allowing third parties to develop apps for their faourite devices. This will allow both commercial organisations and enthusiasts to develop applications for any mobile device and interface with Tesco website. At the moment this includes searching for a product and adding it to a basket.

How great to be able to finish a packet of something, scan it with you phone and add the item to next week’s shop! People have been talking about this for a long time but finally it seems very close.

Woolworths launches pick n’ mix on line today

Woolworth's Pick n' Mix

Shop Direct Group launches the new Woolworths website today complete with a very cute Pick n’ Mix selector. Whether pick n’ mix on the internet will really take off remains to be seen. You have to choose 99p’s worth of each option and it costs £1.50 to deliver orders of under £5 and £3.50 for orders of over £5. Also where’s the instant, mouthwatering gratification… but you couldn’t have Woolies without Pick n’ Mix!

The other categories for sale are a main shop with kid’s clothes, toys and technology, an entertainment shop with DVDs, Games and Books and a party shop (self explanatory).

Interesting to see how this brand fares on line. Woolies has left a gap on the high street but does the online offer fill this gap?

Store Communications – Learn from the best

While not necessarily the best at store communications, mobile phone retailers certainly have a lot of communicating to do! There is lots more communicating required with complex phone features and tariffs than there is with loaves of bread so I was really interested to read about Carphone Warehouse’s approach. Carphone is also currently changing its customer approach to be much more service oriented and less overtly sales led to fall in line with the Best Buy philosophy, and of course to improve customer service – even more communicating required.

So, in summary, here’s how they do it. General communication goes through a company intranet CPWtouch, a new platform for operating procedures called How2 is launching and there is already a task management system call Customer First Companion. There is also a weekly update on the company called Chalk Talk. These systems are used in combination for maximum effect. Carphone Warehouse is also using external help to measure service scores for each store.

Of course the Carphone Warehouse is a large retailer selling an exceptionally complex product so they need sophisticated and comprehensive communication systems. It is all about horses for courses. You need the level which is right for your business.

Store Communications – what level are you at?

There are probably four levels of communication systems:

1. Phone, fax and post – Can be friendly and its slowness means that stores are not overwhelmed with tasks and information but is slow, expensive and reduces business agility.
2. Email only – Vast improvement in speed of communication but is uncontrollable. Tasks and information for stores proliferate at an alarming rate and it is hard to see who has done what.
3. Email with an information only intranet – As per email but with the added advantage of ensuring that everyone can findto up to date information.
4. Full store communication system – Systems which manage tasks in stores, collate feedback and ensure access to the right information. Our store communication system RAPID  falls into this category.

There is a general trend over time for retailers to be moving up these levels. The speed of movement depends on the size of the retailer, the level of central control exerted by head office, the propensity towards the use of systems and the complexity of the product sold.

Which approach is right for your business at the moment?

Is the recession just what your business needed?

One of the themes from number of speakers at the Future Focus was exactly that question and I thought that this was exactly the right time to stop and take stock. If you take the start of the recession from the collapse of the Lehman Brothers in September 2008, we are 9 months in now, time enough to review the success of strategies.

This is relevant to retailers, retail technology suppliers and consultants alike. In fact any business.

What are you doing differently? Is it working? Are you doing enough differently? What were doing before the recession which you look back on now as crass extravagance (you can rest assured that many consumers are doing this one!)? How can you make sure that when things pick up, you don’t become complacent again? Have you changed so much for the better that, the challenges of the recession have been valuable lessons which will stand you in good stead for the future?

Joules Clothing – email marketing at its best

Congratulations to Joules for coming up with such a great idea for their email marketing! This gave me enough of a laugh to forward to friends and with a prize of a chicken coop, it fits perfectly with Joules’ country image and the new “back to basics” mood of the public.

You have until the end of today to be in with a chance of a chicken coop!

Future Focus London… and WordPress

I attended the Future Focus event hosted by the Telegraph Business Club and IBM yesterday. Not surprisingly, one of the themes was DIY media, blogging, twittering and using social media. Twitter was monitored through the day and descriptions of the event were put up on the Future Focus blog as it happened. The url of the blog was given in the event and I looked it up today. I was most impressed to find that the blog is hosted here at WordPress.
Another theme was that of cloud computing. I was trying to think of cloud computing services which I use in my working day and I could only come up with this blog and Google Analytics. So well done, WordPress does it again!

Maybe Retail Answers could benefit from using the cloud a bit more? Or should we market our retail intranet Rapid as a cloud service?

By the way, the best bit of the event was the live voting on topics such as when will the recession end using hand held terminals and the results being displayed on screen immediately afterwards. It was great to have the interaction.

Can the owners of gift cards get their money if a retailer goes into administration?

Three things have happened together in the last couple of days:

Retail Week ran an article about the problems faced by customers who have Principles giftcards

I read an article based on some research by Zebra Technologies saying that money sitting on gift cards totals £30m in the UK

I was contacted in error by someone who has £60 worth of Bay Trading gift cards and has been told that she cannot spend them in store.

Are consumers who are holding gift cards and vouchers really at risk of losing the value of them if the retailer goes into administration? Presumably they can put in a claim to the administrator like any other creditor? Is it right that the administrator can continue to trade to gain the most value from the stock in the business but refuse to accept gift cards? Is there a government body who will guarantee the money?

Whatever the case, it seems like a good idea if we get out and spend that £30m quick!

What does the Retail Operations team really need from a system?

Well, as the authors of the RAPID store communication system, we at Retail Answers like to think that we have a pretty good idea of the answers to that question. We work with customers such as Thomas Pink, Moss Bros and Borders to make sure that we keep RAPID up to date and address the issues our clients face.

Retailers with physical shops are facing major challenges with tough trading conditions, rising business rates and stiff competition from online retail. The Retail Operations team is in the front line of this, yet frequently is the least equipped department in terms of systems, often making do with email or even in some cases phones and faxes.

So just to make sure that RAPID is rising to these challenges, we are hosting a RAPID consultants day tomorrow and have invited the leading consultants in the area of retail operations to get their feedback on RAPID. We are very excited to share what we are doing with RAPID and gather new ideas and have a productive discussion around this big question.

With the death of technology shows, how’s a retailer to find a system?

With the recent decline and eventual demise of all retail techology shows in the UK, there is a question over how potential buyers find potential suppliers. Of course the simple internet search using Google is the obvious answer and it is probably the success of internet search which has caused the afforementioned demise. Searches of the whole internet though, tend to bring back a pretty mixed bag of results and you would need to try several search terms to get a reasonable list. It would also not be possible to filter the results by companies based in the UK, or those supplying systems using Microsoft technology, for example.

In reponse to this problem, a couple of new directories have sprung up. The first is On Windows. This is managed by Tudor Rose who publish Retail Speak and is for Microsoft partners only. This type of information is also on the microsoft.com but if you are looking for a specialist retail systems, the On Windows site is much easier.

Secondly Conjungo is providing supplier search service for all types of system across all industries. Retail Technology magazine is planning to link to this engine in the near future.

The limitations of this type of directory are that they only list suppliers who have paid to be listed and those suppliers get to write their own entry. It is therefore very hard to get a view on the quality of the suppliers and you will only see those who have paid to be on the directory. Of course this is also true of internet searches – suppliers write their own websites and only those who invest in SEO will do well in the searches. However, for the technology buyer these developments can only be good news. Suppliers will need to think carefully about how they spend their marketing budgets.