Contactless Payment – the need for integration

The contactless payment trial that has been running in the City has been using non-integrated bank terminals. This approach somewhat negates the queue-busting benefits of this technology. By the time the amount to pay has been keyed into the terminal you might as well handle cash.

It has just been announced in Retail Week that EAT in Moorgate is the first to go live with integrated contactless payment. Congratulations to Commidea (EFT provider), Barclaycard (Merchant Aquirer), Common Sense (EPOS provider) and of course EAT!

Next time I am in the city, I shall try it out.

Text message marketing – Is it the way forward for retailers?

Last week my husband received a text from B&Q telling him about a 10% off weekend they were running. Receiving a text message of this kind from a retailer is something of a novelty – I don’t think it had happened to either of us before. We were in the market for a garden gate and a hedge trimmer so we visited B&Q and got a good deal on both – happy customers, happy retailer.

And yet… My husband has no idea how B&Q came to have his mobile number. He probably gave it to them at some point but has no memory of it. How receptive would we be to this form of marketing if Thursday meant 20 texts each from various retailers detailing their weekend promotions? B&Q did not ask us how we heard of the promotion (or indeed even if we knew about it) so it will be difficult to separate the uplift in sales which was due to the promotion and that which was due to the text campaign.

My conclusion is that as more companies start using this form of direct marketing, retailers will need to be more sophisticated in their approach if they are to avoid alienating customers.

Hello and welcome to my blog!

I celebrated 10 years working at Retail Answers a few months ago which also means that I have spent over 10 years in the arena of retail systems. Starting as a developer, I have actually written retail systems myself! Since then I have worked at nearly 20 retailers as a business analyst or project manager and as commercial director for Retail Answers, I am responsible for sales and marketing to the retail industry. I figure I must have learnt something along the way!

I intend to keep this a fairly general commentary about IT for retailers, though a little bit about Retail Answers might creep in from time to time. I hope it will be a useful resource for others but for myself, I’m hoping it will help me formulate opinions on the market and inspire me to keep bang up to date.

The main thing with blogs seems to be to keep going so I hope I can hack the pace! The plan is to post a couple of times a week.