Looking for true multichannel integration?

 

If you are looking for true multichannel integration, it is worth taking a look at the offering from Unipower (see http://www.unipowersolutions.com/). The EPOS and WebStore are just different views of the same software so all transactions are in a common database. The WebStore is just another store with its own branch ID so you can buy on line and return in store and all customer data is held across all channels. If a loyalty card or postcode lookup is used to identify customers in store,  a customer will be able to see all their transactions irrespective of the purchase channel when looking at their account online. It will also be possible for store staff to look up the purchase history on a till or for the customer to view the history on a kiosk.  

For retailers looking for a total solution, Unipower are now offering a Microsoft Dynamics Nav merchandising and accounts integrated system.

What is the value of gift cards and vouchers in your house?

gift cards

Do an audit and add up the total value of gift cards and vouchers in your possession. Some will be generous gifts from friends and family, some will have been earnt as part of loyalty schemes and some will have been free gifts with purchase. I even found one in my house which had been won in a sailing race!

If we just consider the traditional gift voucher or card which someone has actually paid the retailer full face value for, this is excellent business for the retailer for a number of reasons:

• there will almost certainly be a delay between purchase and spend when the retailer can earn interest on the money
• a proportion of vouchers and cards will be lost or simply never spent – pure profit
• many customers when they come to spend the voucher will exceed the value – increased sales
• customers who do not usually shop in a particular store may be encouraged in – increased customer base

Technologically there are three main approaches:

• traditional paper pre-printed vouchers – many will have serial numbers and scanable barcodes and stolen vouchers can be cancelled
• vouchers printed at the till with scanable barcodes – these don’t look as pleasing but are easily tracked by EPOS systems and don’t exist before issue so therefore cannot be stolen
• gift cards which can be charged with money at the till, the value usually being stored in a central database – these arguably look the most pleasing and are certainly marketing as being superior for presents. Gift cards can also be precharged to be sold away from the till, most often in so called “gift card malls”, where a retailer offers a selection of other retailers’ cards in return for commission.

I used all three types this weekend with equal success.

The third annual Retail Gift Cards Europe Conference lasting two full days in London in September is testament to how big this business is and considers the details and challenges of setting up a scheme. It also reports on creative ways of marketing gift cards. Even retailers with successful schemes might find some new ideas.

In the meantime, clear out your house, find out what you’ve got and go on a spending spree !

Retail Solutions 2008

Who scheduled Retail Solutions against Wimbledon? Despite all the tennis excitement, I did manage to pop in to the new look Retail Solutions at Excel.

To pick a couple of highlights:

Profimetrics Price Optimisation system recently acquired by Itim looked interesting. It has been designed by the team behind Arthur Planning and has some impressive quantified benefits based on a case study from the US. It is being marketed as the first, second generation price optimisation system. Improvements on generation one (systems like Demandtec and ProfitLogic) include visibility of the formulae and rules behind the results.

The Magic Mirror from RetailCam is at the opposite end of retail technology – right at the customer facing end. Just speaking from personal experience, excellent customer service in the changing room can make the difference between buying a pile of clothes and withdrawing from battle exhausted and empty handed. A lot of incremental sales can be made in the dressing room just by having a reliable method to ask staff to fetch a different size – not quite so glamorous as the Magic Mirror, but makes a huge difference to customers.

The magic mirror can email pictures and videos of the customer wearing the clothes to friends for a second opinion.  You would need to be very sure that this is only going to happen when you request it – malfunctions could be embarrassing! See this Retail Solutions press release for more details.

Overall though, the show was smaller and it was hard to spend all day there due to the lack of free seminars. The conference running alongside could have worked well but the conference programme was a full day allowing little time to go round the show in one day. Perhaps half day conferences are the answer?

I wonder what the plans for next year are?

Customer Centric Point of Service

The recent Aberdeen Group report of the same name makes interesting reading. 175 retail companies from across the globe were surveyed. The fact that only 22% of the respondents were from Europe does mean that the results need to be treated with caution by UK retailers. This geographical distibution may explain some results which look slightly odd but more of that later.

Top interesting facts:

* Retailers are sweating their assets!
- 60% of retailers have EPOS systems which are over 5 years old
- 35% of those have EPOS systems which are over 10 years old

* Processing promotions including coupon based promotions is still sufficiently challenging to warrant inclusion

Items that may not ring true in the UK:

* Aberdeen split retailers into Best in Class (top 20%), Average (next 50%) and laggards (bottom 30%). The average improvement in basket size for the last year for best in class was quoted as 19.5% – extremely impressive for any retailer! I wonder how many British retailers achieved that.

* Across all three divisions the penetration of gift cards was greater than universal (does that mean integrated?) PIN entry devices. Is the UK behind on gift cards and ahead on Chip & Pin? Or maybe my gut instinct is wrong…

Recommendations for moving POS forward:

* Monitor customer satisfaction at the POS using a random sample. Also monitor basket size and speed of transactions. Set goals for all these measures.

*Integrate your POS into other channels. Consider using SOA (Service Orientated Architecture) for this.

* Use information from the POS to plan promotions. Share the knowledge across departments (IT, marketing, store operations, buying)

* Other POS functionality to consider – contactless payment, loyalty schemes, CRM, mobile POS, guided selling prompts and PCI compliance (customer service does not stop at the front office, providing security for customers’ data is part of the service!)