Category Archives: Customer Engagement & Business Intelligence

by Jennifer Bosavage

Biometrics: More Than a Way To Turn On Your iPhone

Biometrics is an emerging technology in retail, used primarily to verify identity. With the debut of Apple’s iPhone 5 with fingerprint sensor in 2013, biometrics

Biometrics predicted to become more widespread at POS systems.

Biometrics predicted to become more widespread at POS systems.

became part of the household vernacular. Samsung and PayPal followed soon after with fingerprint authentication. Today, biometric technology can be integrated into banks, ATM machines, USB keys hooked onto computers, as well as POS systems.

In addition, retailers are looking at the technology to help prevent loss due to ID theft. Biometrics are incorporated into fingerprint identification, as well as palm-vein readers and facial recognition solutions to offer a convenient and additional layer of security, help prevent fraud and provide a better customer experience. Biometrics can also offer retailers controlled access and accurate attendance records, leading to a more secure workplace environment. With system and hardware prices dropping and reliability and convenience going up, more retailers are using some form of the technology.

Marius Coetzee from Ideco told BizTechAfrica that biometrics were critical for fast, accurate customer ID verification — which results in fast, accurate decision making: “Point Of Sale based biometric verification is a critical aspect to reducing losses caused by increasing levels of ID fraud. Once customer details are registered, you can trade with certainty at every point of transaction.”

According to Research and Markets, the global market for biometrics is on track to post a strong CAGR of 19.6% between 2014 and 2020, reaching a projected $30.1 billion by 2020, up from roughly $10.3 billion in 2014. Fingerprint recognition is estimated to be the largest technology with market, valued at $3.2 billion in 2014 while Civil ID — the use of biometrics to identify or verify the identity of individuals when interacting with governments — will be the largest application with global market of $4.6 billion in the same year.

Retailers will increase using biometrics in multiple combinations to ensure security in payments, but, eventually, the technology could eliminate the need to carry a payment card or even a smartphone by letting users authorize payments with a fingerprint alone.

by Jennifer Bosavage

Beacons Show the Way To Increased Loyalty

Beacons let retailers them to collect data that can be analyzed and put to work in the form of  personalized content that resonates with customers. The end goal? To encourage not only purchasing, but also store loyalty. A recent partnership between an advertising firm and a mobile technology company illustrates that increaing interest in using beacons to enhance the storefront and shopper relationship.

Retailers know how important offering excellent customer experiences is for their operations - by offering effective service and engaging patrons in a meaningful way, businesses are sure to see boosts in their retention and loyalty rates.

Retailers know how important offering excellent customer experiences is for their operations – by offering effective service and engaging patrons in a meaningful way, businesses are sure to see boosts in their retention and loyalty rates.

Freckle IoT, an ad tech company, has announced its partnership with Blue Bite, the Mobile Standard in Out-of-Home, which implements mobile technology for the retail industry. The relationship will aid in the deployment of 60,000 beacons nationwide. Connecting Freckle IoT’s open beacon ecosystem to Blue Bite’s location partnerships and mTAG platform helps advertisers launch innovative, integrated marketing campaigns that connect with consumers across digital, mobile and Out-of-Home environments with scale.

Retailers are leaders among industries adopting beacons, as they use  them to provide customers with product information, flash sales or deals, and to speed up the checkout process with contactless payment systems. Geo-location lets retailers send relevant information — such as discounts, special events and other promotions — directly to shoppers. That’s an effective means of competing against e-commerce outlets, which gather information every time someone visits the page, regardless of whether they purchase.

Beacons do require buy-in from the customer; customers must enable bluetooth and accept location services on their mobile devices, and opt-in to the retailer’s marketing program to receive in-store notifications. Those layers help to reduce customers’ concerns that their privacy is being invaded. User consent provides the foundation of all push-notification programs. And some applications don’t need specific information. For example, Apple, creator of iBeacons, has rolled out the technology in all of its U.S. stores, but doesn’t collect any specific user information about shoppers. For now, the company is simply using the sensors to show customers how beacon technology works.

Currently, less than 1% of the 3.5 million retail stores in the United States have rolled out beacon technology, according to Umbel, a business analytics company. That number is rapidly growing however, with household names including Macy’s, Lord & Taylor, Starwood Hotels, McDonald’s and Major League Baseball rolling out solutions.

The Freckle IoT partnership makes use of Blue Bite’s expertise in the area  of Out-of-Home mobile activations and takes advantage of the company’s extensive roster of location partners. Freckle IoT’s open beacon network connects the company’s rising number of application partners with its beacon ecosystem, addressing the challenge of scalability in proximity deployments.

As more retailers employ beacons, shoppers will find them in more unusual places — including transit, street furniture, airports, college campuses, movie theaters, bars and taxis — working to provide rich content through mobile or wearable devices and target in-app advertising on a hyper-local level. Brands can deliver innovative, contextually relevant messaging to engaged and interested consumers who want to be connected and be a part of an enhanced shopping experience.

by Ulyana Avetisov

London’s Leading Beauty Distributor Dramatically Improves Inventory Visibility and Customer Engagement with Retail Pro Prism®

 

34,000 salon and spa owners, beauty press, students and investors—from the simplistic beauty minimalists to naturalists to eclectic colourists with flawless skin, and ultra-modern divergents of Mondrian-esque hues embodied in tiny masterpieces on each perfectly polished nail.

In the whirlwind of the United Kingdom’s Professional Beauty Exhibition 2015 in London, the International Institute for Anti-Ageing (iiaa) stands apart from the excited rush—cool, collected, clinical. They are the scientists of the industry.

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The Hands that Mold the Ageless Beauty

Behind the science of beauty is the careful and smart B2B operation. To the salon world, iiaa is a wholesale product distributor.  They supply the triune secret of advanced biological technology in the form of supplements, skincare products, and make up, and they train skincare professionals and new therapists from Beauty College. They are renowned for the quality of their products. Salons and customers alike are eager to be supplied with their award-winning formula for beauty.

Iiaa’s goal is to educate those who stock their product but they wanted to be educated themselves as well, to learn about the people who love and benefit from their products. Because they have traditionally been distributors only, they have little face-to-face with their end users. This year’s exhibition afforded iiaa a unique opportunity to learn more about their customers and begin their journey as a retailer.

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Adopting Tools to Support their Education Strategies

Whereas they have been lively participants in Professional Beauty tradeshows for years, this is the first year in which they leveraged retail software that allowed them to do much more than just accept payments and dole out change.

iiaa took on the purely mobile, modular retail management platform, Retail Pro Prism, running on several HP Elite pads, to replace their old POS system—“The Big Calculator. I don’t know what else to call it!,” Louisa Collins, iiaa’s Purchasing Coordinator and IT Support, quipped in our interview. What they saw as critical in Retail Pro Prism’s offer is “the simplicity of the tender screen, its functionality, and the reports.”

Retail Pro Business Partner, Datascan, completed the Prism deployment long before the exhibition, but on the day of the event, Louisa realized she didn’t know how to connect Prism to the server. “Dave, one of the tech guys from Datascan drove four hours to help me at the exhibition, and he stayed to help in case anything else came up. He was on-call with us the whole time,” Louisa remembers. “At one point, we were so busy, we even had him run transactions for us!” Retail Pro service was unlike any other.

That level of dedicated support is what Retail Pro is known for in its channel support network. “Their support was fantastic. I haven’t dealt with a company that put so much effort into making sure the customer was taken care of. We thought we were just a small company taking on their till.”

Conveying Their Brand at All Customer Touch Points

In choosing a retail management software, image was a critical factor to iiaa. One of the things that caught their eye with Retail Pro Prism was its modern look. “Prism matched what our brand looks like: clinical, sleek!” Louisa said. iiaa customized Prism’s user interface with their logo and have customized their printed documents as well.

With their previous POS, receipts consisted of a slip of paper with just the date and the amount of product sold. The receipts they are printing with Retail Pro Prism are completely branded and detailed. “Our customers told us, ‘It’s such a professional look now!’”

Increasing Efficiency in the Field

Louisa loves Retail Pro Prism’s scanning and touchscreen capabilities. “It’s so efficient…just brilliant!” she said. Her colleagues feel just as strongly: “Oh my god, this is a dream!” The touch screen buttons on the interface give quick access to products, so transaction times decrease, and Prism’s flexible design allows them to customize the interface to be as simple or detailed as they need.

Voiding transactions is simple as well. “We used to have to print a receipt and write void on it,” Louisa remembers, “but now we can just void it without any trouble. And we can put through products that we couldn’t before for a new client deposit or opening order.” This is especially important at large events like the Professional Beauty exhibition, where there is a chaos of customers trying to visit as many stands as possible to take advantage of all the goods available.

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Adding E-Commerce to their Strategy to Increase Customer Engagement

iiaa took advantage of Prism’s mobility to engage their customers at the beauty exhibition. As they expand their strategy to include an online channel in addition to their brick and mortar store—where they focus primarily on treatment— they plan to use Retail Pro Prism in their clienteling process to attract, engage, and keep customers, and link people to their local salons.

“We’d eventually like to collect their details—emails, products they liked or purchased—so we can contact them on a more personal level.” Considering they provide their skin analysis at a variety of locations in Britain and as a complimentary service, iiaa will certainly benefit from Retail Pro Prism’s capacity in Customer Management.

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Tracking What Customers Use and Love

iiaa used Retail Pro Prism’s native analytics features to track all of the product they sold at the exhibition and see what customers actually use.

With their old POS system, “we had no idea how much was sold for each brand. We would just have to hope that our colleagues put the money in the right till for the right product.” Now, because Prism is recording what inventory is going home with a customer and documenting it with the professional receipts they are printing or sending via email, iiaa can see precisely what product is in demand.

At the exhibition, iiaa tracked sales per brand, per product, per employee—the tracking possibilities are endless. In two days, they ran 3,000 transactions and sold £85,000 worth of product.

As they prepare for their next exhibition in May, Louisa muses, “We’ll have to sit down and discuss how we can use this functionality.” iiaa is so new to Retail Pro—they had only been using the retail management software for five months at the time of this interview and there is still so much more to explore and leverage in Retail Pro—but Louisa is excited. The future looks bright.

 

Learn more about iiaa at www.iiaa.eu

by Ulyana Avetisov

Curated Fashion Retailer Implements Their Omnichannel Customer Engagement Strategy with Retail Pro®

Fashion has always set the course for Lyn Evans’ life and passions. In 1978, she opened her first women’s clothing and accessories boutique, Lyn Evans Potpourri Designs (from here on called Lyn Evans). In 1980, Lyn established her second store in Wellesley, MA, which currently serves as their flagship store and corporate office. Lyn Evans makes it their mission to curate an exceptional shopping experience and to give back to the communities they serve.

The Lyn Evans Lifestyle

Lyn Evans does not take a price-driven approach to retail. Instead, each of Lyn’s seven stores with locations in community-focused North East cities in the U.S. strives to build personal relationships with the customers they serve.

“We get a lot of snowstorms in Massachusetts,” Shotkus told us. “Some of our patrons will travel for two to three months to a warmer part of the country. We don’t want to lose the customer just because we don’t have a store in that location, so we keep up the relationship online.”

One such customer is a poster child for this kind of relationship maintenance. An associate met with her online for a personal shopping appointment. An hour and a half and one happy customer later, the Lyn Evans associate hung up the phone with a $3,000 order.

Lyn Evans takes fashion to the community - and won the Association of Massachusetts Award of Excellence for commitment to community service.

Lyn Evans takes fashion to the community – and won the Association of Massachusetts Award of Excellence for commitment to community service.

“Our goal,” Lyn Evans owner Stan Shotkus said, “is to integrate the stores with the online community, with our website serving as a showroom.”

 

Lyn Evans Gives Back

With customer engagement that far surpasses most consumer expectations, Lyn Evans is building a reputation of being a community-centered business. In 2012, they were awarded the Retailers Association of Massachusetts Award of Excellence for commitment to community service.

One non-profit to which they donated is the National Education for Assistance Dog Services, or NEADS, which works with a nearby prison to train dogs to be service animals for people with special needs. They have also raised money for animal shelters, breast cancer awareness, school projects and scholarship funds, and many other causes and organizations.

Their relationship with the community is the reason their customers are such loyal fans. “People do business with people they like,” Shotkus said. “If we were just price driven, our customers would have no reason to come to us, or to keep coming back. But we’re more than that.”

 

Curating Custom Looks

It is out of these intimate retailer-shopper-community relationships that Lyn Evans stores began shaping the direction for their next stage in retail.

As a boutique, they serve a consistent community of loyal fans, and they always give their shoppers a reason to come back: their collections are updated and refreshed throughout the season, with a local boutique version of Zara-esque turnover for their styles.

But the market does not always cater to a specific community’s fashion ambitions. “Customers would come to us with requests for certain styles or colors that just weren’t available in the marketplace. Sometimes they would just want a longer top or longer sleeves, or a color that wasn’t available with the current color trends,” Shotkus told us. “So that’s how Lyn Evans label was born.” Lyn Evans stores now carry 24 items that they’ve curated specifically for their customers, and there are plans for growth.

 

Lyn Evans' chic Westborough, MA store

Lyn Evans’ chic Westborough, MA store

Defining their Omnichannel Strategy   

Lyn Evans is striving to create a seamless experience for their customers. Every store is suited with iPads that display their company website at all times to allow for cross-selling of items from other stores. If a customer wants a certain style or color that is not available at their location, a store associate will save the sale by helping the customer place the order from the store’s iPad before they go.

They keep track of everything using their Retail Pro retail management software, which manages all of their inventory for all channels. Lyn Evans outfitted their Retail Pro with an e-commerce solution from 24Seven Commerce to administer web orders, and integrated the two to keep real-time tabs on inventory across every location, without data duplication. Other solutions they tested created too many intermediary steps to keep clear inventory on both their brick and mortar and their online channels. 24Seven, as an integration with Retail Pro, significantly simplified their operations.

24Seven’s transparency and level of communication accelerated the implementation process. “It’s a very responsive team,” Stan shared. “We were communicating on a daily and sometimes hourly basis.”

 

Using Analytics to Direct their Strategy 

The company hired a new buyer, who came to them from the shoe and apparel retailer Reebok. She was experienced in complex analytics but needed to learn how to optimize the Retail Pro reports capabilities for their retail business. So Lyn Evans management called their Retail Pro Business Partner, JD Associates, to conduct a half-day training seminar on-site on how to create customized reports with their Retail Pro analytic tools.

The buying team uses custom Retail Pro reports to see exactly what their customers want. Lyn Evans analyzes performance data from the previous year’s collection and guides future buying decisions accordingly. Last year, they purchased 7,000 tops at this point in time. This year, based on data collected from their customers’ purchasing trends, they bought only 3,700, improving inventory flow and turn.

“It’s constantly evolving. You can say, ‘Aha! I’ve found the secret formula for which and how many of each product to buy,’ but you’ve really only discovered it for this point in time.”

Now they are implementing an inventory rebalancing program fueled by Retail Pro analytics. Because they can see exactly what inventory is at which store, they can transfer goods from one location to another to meet customer demand. The customer can order online and pick it up in one of our stores or have it shipped to their home, which is a big part of the Omni channel convenience their customers enjoy.  In addition, a replenishment strategy will be implemented on basic and core products to maintain a good stock position.

Lyn Evans carries all the season's best colors and styles and curates their own by popular demand.

Lyn Evans carries all the season’s best styles and curates their own by popular demand.

Taking the Experience Online

Lyn Evans is also applying this business intelligence for growth in their online store. “In order for the specialty store to survive, we have to change the way we do business.” The challenge is keeping the personalized customer experience consistent between the online store and the brick and mortar stores, but their customers know that a friendly Lyn Evans associate is always just a phone call away.

And they are not limiting their website to be just another avenue for sales. “We are promoting a lifestyle,” Stan explained. Plans for the website include adding a blog with top trends, recipes, and how-to videos, like this video of a Lyn Evans associate showing different ways to tie a scarf.

With these seamless omnichannel operations in place, the Lyn Evans boutiques have achieved a competitive advantage over so many retailers in their industry, creating a smooth and personalized experience for their shoppers through both channels, while staying true to their brand. “We are a small company with only seven stores. We don’t have the resources that the big players do. We had to do this on a budget and in a short time frame, but we have the passion and commitment to take our business to the next level.” And, might we say, they are doing it exceptionally well.

 

 

 

 

by Jennifer Bosavage

Recognizing the Customer Is Key to Retail Personalization

Retailers today — like myriad ones before them — face the challenge of personalization. Customers want products that satisfy their needs, but they also want some element of serendipity. Creating a shopping experience that caters to the customer is the challenge of every retailer, regardless of whether it’s a brick ad mortar, or an online specialty shop. It’s been the marching orders of every store since bartering for goods: Provide what the buyer wants in both goods and services, and you’ll earn a loyal customer.

Earning those types of customers requires deep and insightful knowledge in order to successfully use personalization as a tool. Online retailers do not have the benefit of engaging customers in casual conversation, making eye contact or reading body language. But they do have reams of data from information keyed in by every customer. The challenge is in designing a Web site that will provide the desired information, and then analyzing that data for accurate results. The websites that generate the most sales are customer-centric and address shoppers’ needs.

Shrewd retailers will use that information and create shopper “personas,” or archetypes of customers, that can be used to personalize the type, amount and even design of site content. But a common trap is that the information gleaned is influenced by the researcher’s own experiences. Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business at MIT Sloan, wrote in a post that was published on Harvard Business Review that people are not inherently better at making decisions, predictions, judgments, and diagnoses, although people seem to be proficient at telling stories that weave together multiple causes and multiple contexts. “The stories we tell ourselves are very often wrong,” wrote McAfee, “and we have a host of biases and other glitches in our mental wiring that keep us from sizing up a situation correctly.”

Trends within customer service sometimes come and go, but one aspect that seems to satisfy consumers significantly is personalized elements during their shopping experiences.

Trends within customer service sometimes come and go, but one aspect that seems to satisfy consumers significantly is personalized elements during their shopping experiences.

Creating those personas is a solid first step, and resources exist to help retailers, such as Oracle’s blog Identifying Buyer Profiles: 5 Ways To Segment Your Marketing Audience. Physical stores with an online presence working to bolster their omnichannel efforts can benefit from understanding their target audiences — and it’s likely that online shoppers may be similar, but different from, those frequenting the mall, for instance. Personalization efforts therefore need to acknowledge and be tailored to each shopping channel.

Last week, RetailPro announced a strategic partnership with 24Seven Commerce, a Silicon-Valley based global provider of integrated e-commerce software and market place solutions for independent retailers. With 24Seven, Retail Pro customers have access to turn-key integrated e-commerce applications that extend and enhance the capabilities of their physical stores. But for online customers, the 24Seven Cart also includes an adaptable responsive design and easy to navigate interface for the quickly growing smartphone shopper segment. Personalizing those types of solutions for customers can go a long way toward positioning a retailer as one that is attending to the way customers want to shop.

It’s critical for retailers to recognize the nuances of who their buyers are: What they don’t want and need is just as important as what they do. Further, understanding their “pain points” and working to relieve them will turn a retailer’s site from one that is reflective of products, to one that is a resource that shoppers see as “just for them.”

by Jennifer Bosavage

Why Beacons Are the Next Big Thing

There’s a war being fought in retail between the brick-and-mortar store fronts, and the e-commerce players. Physical stores have had to beat back e-commerce competitors, which often offer lower prices for products, due in large part to low overhead costs. Slowly but surely, e-commerce is nibbling away at the retail pie: The fourth quarter 2014 e-commerce estimate from the census bureau increased 14.6% from the fourth quarter of 2013, while total retail sales increased 3.7% in the same period. E-commerce sales in the fourth quarter of 2014 accounted for 6.7% of total sales. But brick and mortars are fighting back with beacon technology.

Business Insider recently reported it expects beacons to directly influence more than $4 billion worth of U.S. retail sales this year at top retailers, or 1% of the total). That number could climb tenfold by 2016. In particular, beacons — which alert shoppers to deals, specials and discounts on in-store merchandise, while the customer is in close proximity to the item — are the next evolutionary phase in store operations and can become integral parts of loyalty programs. Repeat shoppers are rewarded with personalized offers, generated via the beacon technology.

Beacons push out messages to shoppers, rather than gather data. Once shoppers “opt-in” to the location-based marketing program, their smartphones can detect the beacons. The smartphone relays a “VIP in store” message back to the beacon, which directs the information to a store associate’s mobile retail management device, and the store associate then personally greets the loyal patron.

Beacons could beat back much of the competition from e-commerce merchants because, despite online shopping’s growing popularity, approximately 90% of what people buy still comes out of brick-and-mortar locations, according to Adweek. In addition to burnishing loyalty programs, beacon technology, with its broadcast capability, can successfully entice passersby to come in. That is a clear and distinct advantage over e-commerce retailers, which must rely on search engines and word of mouth primarily.

Beacons can broadcast a “consider stopping in” message, which a shopper receives on his or her smartphone. That can drive new customers, who may not otherwise come into a store. An even more directed effort can be obtained through hyper-local marketing, which provides very specific messages to very specific customers.

Despite the growth in e-commerce, brick and mortars are stepping up the offensive by employing beacon technologies to communicate to shoppers the deals they just shouldn’t be passing by.

by Retail Pro

Increase Productivity in 2 Weeks with Retail Pro University Spring Training

Spring is traditionally a time of change, renewal, and growth.  All around us, nature wakes up from the long winter as the days get longer and warmer.  Here in the United States, our baseball teams go into spring training to prepare for baseball season. The spring season is also a time when retailers traditionally launch new product lines. They take advantage of their retail software for analytics and visibility into inventory across channels to clear out the old and make room for the new.

We at Retail Pro want to help you build a strong, winning team for your business with Retail Pro University spring training.  It’s the ideal time to use your POS software to position your business for growth and prepare for action in the face of changes spurred by retail evolution.

No one needs to tell you that employee training on your retail point of sale software is critical for your business.  Investing in training for your employees can yield many benefits, including:

Global businesses had a successful 2012 fiscal year, according to retail reports.

Increase employee productivity in store operations by training them to use your Retail Pro platform’s robust functionality effectively. 

  • Improved employee morale and increased motivation
  • Higher employee satisfaction and a reduction in employee turnover
  • Enhanced company image
  • Increased capacity for new business
  • Increased efficiency in business processes

Your employees are at the heart of your retail management software’s ability to increase efficiency in your store operations and make your business more successful.  At Retail Pro University, we’re here to help you maximize productivity in one of your most valuable resources.  An investment in training is an investment in your organization’s future.

Now is the time to sign your employees up for spring training.  Each month at our Retail Pro headquarters in Folsom, California, we offer live training and certification examinations for your retail POS software.  In our two-week certification course, your employees can learn the foundations of Retail Pro and become certified in any of three specializations:

  • Retail Pro Applications Expert (RPAE)
  • Retail Pro Systems Engineer (RPSE)
  • Retail Pro Reports Professional (RPRP)

Did you miss our February class? There are still a few spots left for March and April.  Instructor-led classes will be held from March 9 through March 20, and from April 13 through April 24.  Learn more about training options for your employees at the Retail Pro University website at https://www.retailpro.com/learning/.

 

by Jennifer Bosavage

Retail CEOs Predict More Sales Growth Ahead

A recent study by PWC of CEOs found that while top execs in the retail market generally believe there are more threats to the growth of their companies today than there was three years ago, a majority also believe that there are more growth opportunities for their companies today than in 2012.

Among its findings, the survey found that 66 percent of those responding said they either agreed or agreed strongly that there was more room for increased sales today. Why might that be? Perhaps because of the potential various technologies have on retail. Mobile check out, beacons and data analytics are just a few implementations that can streamline and enhance the customer experience. And happy customers mean larger receipts.

When asked, “How important is/are mobile technologies for customer engagement for CEO’s

Location-based functions on mobile devices offer merchants opportunities to target their retail marketing campaigns and collect information about shoppers' habits.

Location-based functions on mobile devices offer merchants opportunities to target their retail marketing campaigns and collect information about shoppers’ habits.

organizations?” 81 percent of participants in the survey overall said it was either somewhat or very important; 89 percent of retail CEOs said the same. For a growing number of companies, mobile is becoming the primary sales channel, rather than simply a key channel. Statistics show the accelerated growth of mobile payments globally in the last quarter of 2014: 25 percent of global online transactions took place on a mobile device, 11 percent higher than in the third quarter of  2014 (23.3 percent), and 37 percent higher than the fourth quarter of 2013 (18.8 percent). A ‘mobile-first’ strategy is looking increasingly as though it is a viable solution for more businesses heading into 2015.

Data mining and analysis were also critical to CEOs. When asked, “How strategically important is/are data mining and analysis for CEO’s organizations?” 79 percent of all CEOs as well as retail CEOs in particular said they were either somewhat (26 percent) or very (54 percent) important. Beacons can be used to gather data that can direct retailers’ inventory selection as well as product placement. Such track and trace technology can even help retailers predict sales.

But all the customer-centric technology in the world will be for naught if retailers don’t step it up in the security department. With security breaches being reported seemingly every other day, it was surprising that retail CEOs were not more hardcore when rating the critical nature of cybersecurity. When asked “How strategically important is cybersecurity for CEO’s organizations, CEOs 78 percent of CEOs overall said it was somewhat (25) or very (53) important, while 68 percent of retail CEOs said it was somewhat (32) or very (36) important.

 

by Jennifer Bosavage

Local Gift Shop Continuously Evolves with Retail Pro Analytics, Gives Back to Community

In the historical town of Lexington, Mass., retailers walk a fine line between respecting tradition and embracing modern business practices.CY_WhiteSignLg Crafty Yankee, a fine gift shop located right where “the shot heard round the world”was launched, started using Retail Pro as its retail management solution in 2000, leveraging its robust functionality to transform what originally was a sleepy little business into a vibrant, charitable part of the community. Kathy Fields, owner of Crafty Yankee, has a rich background in retail. She had worked in senior positions at Dillard’s and Federated Department Stores before taking a (very) early retirement in her mid-forties. But her retirement didn’t go quite as planned. Kathy Fields bought Crafty Yankee from its founders in 1994, wanting to take on a business that would free up her time and allow her to give back to those less fortunate.

 

Embracing Modern Business Practices

Shortly after the acquisition, she recognized the need to put in a computer system. Initially, she opened a couple satellite stores and networked computers so she could be away from the store—perhaps enjoy a vacation—and still be in touch remotely. Business was growing but Fields eventually realized she needed to consolidate her business into one location and, to be successful, have a thorough understanding of which merchandise was selling and when it was bought. Knowing those sales trends would give her a concrete understanding of what was going on in her business so she could offer popular products and streamline inventory. CY-SpringStoreFront.Best (1024x683)

 

Using Analytics to Reshape the Store

Crafty Yankee found Retail Pro’s analytical capabilities exceptionally valuable in accomplishing this end. “By having good computer information, I can constantly reshape the store,”said Fields. “We must change with the customer: Patterns, age, tastes.” Retail Pro 9 gave Fields tools to analyze Crafty Yankee’s $1 million business by key segments. The store has been using Retail Pro 9 since 2012 and Fields credits the software with contributing to the store’s consistent, healthy growth despite a stagnant overall economy. Knowing what sells—and what doesn’t—is critical to every retailer and Crafty Yankee has adopted an analytical method with Retail Pro.   No guesswork here: “I like to analyze my business in lots of different segments. It’s important to me to start from the top. Let’s say we had a 20% increase last month. Where did that come from? Jewelry? Glass? Pottery? Once I see the trend in the data, I can break it down by vendor or resources. And I can compare that data to last year’s.”

 

A Technology Update that Made a Difference

None of that could have happened if Crafty Yankee had remained with its original retail management platform, CraftShop, which she started using in 1995. Much of the data was difficult to extract and it required quite a bit of manual work. “What I liked from the beginning with Retail Pro was that they saw what I had with the CraftShop system. It was pretty complicated,”said Fields.  Realizing she needed a more robust system, she started researching other software solutions, finally determining that Retail Pro was the best fit for her needs. “I have thousands of items and people would tell me, ‘You’re going to have to re-enter all that information.’And I said, ‘I don’t think so!’” CY-Interior Scarves

 

Targeted Growth that Enables Philanthropy

The Retail Pro platform, together with Fields’ business acumen, positioned her gift emporium for rapid, targeted growth. “I can learn about my business on any day of the week, as well as a specific date of business. I can compare Mother’s Day, Easter, wedding seasons.” I’m looking across the information in a lot of different ways: Top producers by vendor. Who is downtrending? Who is trending up? Our other system was just not as granular; jewelry for example, can be subcategorized. I can put more criteria in the system, which allows me to analyze each item,”Fields said. “We’ve been so successful because of the good computer information I can analyze. We are able to constantly reshape the store. If I hadn’t changed it, year after year, based on the information I get from the Retail Pro solution, the store would be out of business.” And what about the idea of giving back to the community? Crafty Yankee sells a number of items where most, if not all, of the purchasing price is donated to charity. Sometimes, retirement is overrated.

To learn more about Crafty Yankee, visit http://www.CraftyYankee.com.

To learn more about the Certified Retail Pro Business Partner supporting Crafty Yankee, JD Associates, visit http://www.jdapos.com/

by Jennifer Bosavage

The Key To Increasing In-Store Sales? Mobile

Digital retail growth is slowing, but the key to pumping it up likely exists in the palm of customers’ hands.

Sucharita Mulpuru-Kodali, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester

How are consumers using mobile to engage with retailers?

How are consumers using mobile to engage with retailers?

Research and a research partner for the NRF’s State of Retailing Online recently noted that digital retail continues to be strong but growth rates appear to be slowing slightly. She noted that in recent years, many retailers experienced high double-digit growth; now, fewer retailers report that level of fast growth.

It’s important to remember that slower growth doesn’t mean no growth at all. It just means the rate is no longer at breakneck pace. And as e-commerce continues to nab a bigger piece of the retail pie, it will become more difficult to rack up huge percentage increases, although the amount of revenue will rise handsomely.

Still, how to grow those sales? Retailers should look for expanding existing avenues that are succeeding. And that means investing in mobile commerce.

Mobile shopping retail sales in the US were $70 billion in 2014, and Goldman Sachs Group predicts growth to $173 billion by the end of 2018. Goldman’s research found that nearly half of all smartphone users have used their phones to locate store information, such as location and working hours. Clearly, consumers are comfortable with the devices, so it makes sense for retailers to capitalize on that comfort zone, by inventing customers to use their mobile devices while they’re in the store. Wipe away fears of “showrooming” — that’s a thing of the past. The future lies in letting customers access all the information they need to make a decision while still in the store. It’s all about location, location, location for brick and mortars.

The potential growth comes from retailers working with and appealing to mobile phone users. While Forrester Research Inc. says 42% of the world will own a smartphone by the end of this year, research firm IDC notes that just 16% of enterprises have a mobile strategy. Retailers should look at ways to become more aggressive in reaching out to mobile consumers, as conversion rates are typically only 1% on smartphones compared with 3% on desktops. Too often, shoppers can’t find what they want on a mobile site, it’s too difficult to checkout, or service is just too slow.

By embracing mobile shopping within the confines of the physical store, brick and mortars may actually extend their reach. Consumers spend in-store time on their phones, comparing product information. Smart retailers are pushing product information of their own to shoppers’ phones as well, increasing the shopper/retailer connection. And enhancing that connection is key to a revenue uptick in 2015.