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RBTEREPORT 13


INDUSTRY WELCOMES UK SHOW


Business Technology Expo (RBTE) was held on 16 and 17 March in London’s Earl’s Court exhibition centre, running alongside the Cards & Payments Solutions 2011 exhibition and conference in association with Vendorcom, Glynn Davis reports. Judging by feedback from visitors,


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it was a welcome addition. Simon Watson, senior business analyst at Past Times and Whittard of Chelsea, commented: “It’s good to keep up with the latest technology and see how others are exploiting systems. It’s been very useful for me.”


Key themes included the ongoing


trend towards personalisation, which remains a challenge according to Dilip Popat, global industry director of retail at Microsoft Business Solutions: “Retailers have lots of data, maybe in silos, so how do they do personalisation. It’s very complicated. Do you use your existing technology solutions or add to them?” Retailers’ decisions could be based on whether they are able to “connect all the parts, from stores right the way through the supply chain,” he added. Microsoft used RBTE to highlight its Dynamics ‘AX for Retail’ solution (version 2 is to be shipped shortly) that is designed to help retailers integrate their multichannel businesses. Further helping this integration


exercise were a number of Microsoft partners exhibiting at RBTE, including Maginus and K3 Retail, who develop on top of the AX product. Nigel Stephenson, marketing manager at K3 Retail, said: “We’ve added aspects that provide more functionality for multichannel retailing such as merchandising, product planning, forecasting and managing the product lifecycle. We’ve taken the AX for Retail solution and enhanced and modifi ed it.” The trend for personalisation is also spreading to the shop fl oor, as shown


K retailers and IT suppliers have lacked a UK trade show until the Retail


by the solutions from Cegid and NCR. The former demonstrated an interactive touchscreen kiosk solution used by its client Lacoste in France that takes data from the retailer’s loyalty programme (running on Cegid’s customer relationship management technology) and gives customers a tailored visual experience in-store. On the NCR stand, the company


revealed its personalisation platform for self-checkout terminals that fi ts within its converged retailing software and services offer, ‘NCR c-tailing solutions’. John Curnow, NCR area industry director for retail and hospitality, said the software “enables devices to recognise preferences” from customers, such as them being left- handed, having a preferred payment card, and populating the ‘loose product’ screen with their regularly-bought goods. These preferences can be set through a retailer’s existing loyalty scheme or a management solution, such as the newly-introduced NCR Enterprise Preference Manager. Mobile devices offer the greatest


potential for personalisation and wherever you turned at RBTE mobile- related solutions were in evidence. Mobile payment devices were certainly creating some excitement, with VeriFone demonstrating its PAYware Mobile solution. The initial model will be available in May and is aimed at ‘micro-merchants’ who do not have the capability to accept card payments. It is iPhone-based, and combines smartcard, magnetic card and contactless reader functionality in the one piece of hardware, which clips onto the Apple device. Raja Ray, director of product management software solutions at VeriFone, said: “It meets all the standards for card payments and is a cost effective, fully- mobile device that acts just like a card payment terminal.” The way payments are to be accepted will likely grow in importance. Catherine Tong, head of payments and online fraud prevention at Tesco.com,


acknowledged that, “mobile retail is something that retailers can’t ignore”. But she added its customers tell it that the “payments part lets us down, as they do not like to input lots of data on a small device”. One solution highlighted at RBTE, was a voice recognition-based biometrics system by Voice Commerce Group. Nick Ogden, chief executive, is convinced this is the solution to the challenge of authentication on mobile devices. As one of a number of new technologies at the show, it dealt with issues that can help maximise the industry’s value, and arguably make RBTE a welcome regular addition to the retail technology event calendar.


2011 EVENTS


European Electronics Retail Summit 4th May 2011 The Real Palacio Hotel, Lisbon, Portugal www.levinconsulting.com/contact.php


Retail Systems Forum 2011 18th May 2011 Microsoft Conference Centre, Thames Valley Park www.retailsystemsforum.co.uk


SAP UK World Tour 2011 18th May 2011 Twickenham Stadium, London www.sap.com/uk/about/events/ worldtour11


Screenmedia Expo 2011 18th – 19th May 2011 Earls Court, London screenevents.co.uk/screenexpo2011/


European Supply Chain and Logistics Summit 2011 14th June 2011 Maritim ProArte Hotel, Berlin, Germany www.scleurope.com


◆ One fi fth of senior UK retailers predict their businesses will achieve more than 10% uplift in sales in 2012 because of the Olympics, according to Nielsen survey results released to over 480 delegates at the inaugural Retail London conference held this April in London.


◆ ComScore found a 0.07% UK clickthrough rate for static image, fl ash and rich media format display ads. Its research, shared recently with those attending UK affi liate networks Affi liate Window and buy.at performance marketing


exposition Inspire 2011, revealed most consumers online never click on a display advert and that 3% of browsers are responsible for 64% of clicks.


MARCH/APRIL 2011 RETAIL TECHNOLOGY


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