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.

Who else is blogging about Retail Technology?

The launch of the (Retail Systems blog) at the beginning of February got me wondering – who else is blogging about technology for retailers?

Well here is a list of what I found:

In the true blogger (individual expressing their own opinion) category was Deepak Sharma from Tata Consultancy Services, his blog is (Retail Technology Blog).

The retail technology supplier category boasted integrated systems supplier, K3 (The Retail Blogger), e-commerce supplier Salmon (here on wordpress) and BazaarVoice which provides customer review facillities to e-commerce sites.

Providing round ups of retail news are Indian based Retail News Update here on WordPress. It is hard to find the provenance of the articles but it is a great global round up of general retail news including a lot of technology.

Not really a blog but a collection of press releases is IT Backbones’ Retail News. This has lots of contributions every day from retail technology suppliers.

With the entry of a heavy weight like Retail Systems Magazine is this select band set to grow? How many more retail technology suppliers will add blogging to their marketing strategy?

Here are some additions to the list already:

From De la Salle – College of Saint Benilde information technology students in the Philippines we have Vertsol

Not at The Retail Business Show…

What a shame we are not at The Retail Business Show today. The sudden cancellation of the show and the sad demise of Retail Events means that there is no mainstream retail technology show in this country.

It is easy to follow the fortunes of retailers in the national press or Retail Week. Most operate in a gold fish bowl of having to regularly report sales to the stock market and it hits the head lines. Retail technology companies are much less widely publicised. However, it can only be inferred from the cancellation of the show that suppliers were not queueing to book stands.

In any case, it is not good news for suppliers who lost money, for retailers who wanted to have a look at new technology or simply get together, and anyone who was planning to attend the seminars which Retail Events had worked hard to put together.

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.

Retail IT and private equity

So, what is the press saying about what IT can do for venture capitalists investing in retailers? Here is Christopher Field writing in June’s edition of Retail Techology, particularly with reference to systems upstream of the point of sale.

“While there is no shortage of relevant solutions, most retailers are still running their stores off paper; managing communications using a mixture of CDs, forms and telephone calls ……
Private equity companies generally don’t care that IT can solve most of these problems; they have their eyes on the balance sheet, but I do think that the IT vendors could get better at demonstrating how good technology well applied can shave months or even years off the exit.”

This is exactly the area that our store management system, RAPID, addresses and we would love the opportunity to demonstrate how RAPID could hasten the exit to any interested venture capitalists!

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?

BTexpedite and Retalix target the UK grocery industry

The recent tie up between US retail system supplier, Retalix and BTexpedite is exciting from a number of points of view.

BTexpedite is a major player in the provision of EPOS and merchandising systems for fashion retailers with customers such as Oasis, Thomas Pink and JJB Sports but it doesn’t really have a strong presence in the grocery and fuel sector. Retalix has Tesco, Sainsbury’s and BP as references in the UK so adding Retalix to their portfolio should give BTexpedite a great platform to make inroads into this sector. Torex with its ArcIris system might need to take heed.

Retalix has a strong base in the US and with large retailers. Thirty percent of the world’s top 50 food retailers use Retalix software. The new offering is a complete package solution, a “shop in a box” offering which should enable Retalix to gain customers who are smaller than their core customer base.

Finally, (last but not least) this is a new and exciting option for grocery, convenience and fuel retailers in the UK. Although Retalix has been available before, it wasn’t being offered in such an accessable package. Any organisations in these sectors thinking of replacing systems should at least take a look at this option!

 

 

Q. How does Retail Answers usually deliver RAPID?

(RAPID is our web-based store management system)

A. Arrange remote access with the new client and do the installation onto their network remotely. This gives the technical team flexibillity and we would visit the client to do the workshops and training when the system is installed.

Q. How does Retail Answers deliver RAPID when the client sends a box to Retail Answers to install it on and remote access can’t be arranged. Oh and the client is based in central London and parking is difficult.

A. Put the hardware in a rack sack and take the train and tube! It’s greener than driving…

Growth by Acquisition

Consolidation of the retail technology market is nothing new. Torex is the best known and most extreme example with, according to them, upwards of 39 EPoS products at customers, but other companies have been on the acquisition trail on a lesser scale too. Take Sanderson (not the William Morris fabric!). The history of the retail side of their business looks like this.

Dec 2004 Sanderson floated on AIM with a mail order, fulfilment and multichannel offering.

July 2005 Acquired Progressive Computer Systems

Feb 2006 Acquired Megabyte and the Midas retail suite which includes EPoS, HO and multichannel. Megabyte brought with it customers such as English Heritage, Faith and Rohan.

Feb 2007 Bought Elucid from K3. Elucid products cover EPoS, Webshop, call centre and CRM and customers include Hotel Chocolat.

Sep 2007 Acquired RBS best known for its marketing, implementation and support of Retail-j but also of other retail systems. RBS brought with it heavy weight customers such as Harrods, Blacks and French Connection.

Not quite at the stage of send your RFP to them and let them do the selection for you but certainly a complex offering both for potential customers to understand and for Sanderson to integrate into a seamless solution for the modern retailer.