DIGEST Consumers


often know more about products they buy than the people selling them, according to new research from digital retail experience and technology company, Red Ant. The research found that a lack of product knowledge from shopfloor sales staff was something 67% of consumers had noticed, with 40% of these deliberately going online to avoid stores that perform badly (Consumers avoid store service, RetailTechnology. co.uk, 20 August 2013).


CLOUD CONSOLIDATION CONTINUES S


ome of the biggest IT vendors have been busy acquiring added cloud commerce capabilities these past few months. IBM, SAP and Oracle all announced plans that could figure in future retail investment plans. IBM acquired SoftLayer in a deal thought to


be worth around $2 billion (£1.3bn), absorbing the cloud hosting provider into its Cloud Services division. SAP then bought hybris in a deal roughly estimated at $1bn (£653,000), saying the e-commerce provider will retain its existing management and continue to operate as an independent business unit. Customer relationship management (CRM)


provider Salesforce.com also got in on the act. Salesforce paid $2.5bn (£1.6bn) for ExactTarget and its cloud-based digital marketing platform, which is


used by customers as diverse as Coca-Cola, Gap and Appliances Online. Then it announced a partnership with Oracle,


standardising on the Oracle Linux operating system, its Exadata database appliances and Java middleware. Meanwhile NetSuite signed a four-year contract extension to use Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM) with its cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. Oracle also said it will integrate Salesforce.com


Oracle Fusion HCM and Financial Cloud. But, not one to be left out, it also recently acquired Eloqua for $871 million (£569m) to build out its Oracle Customer Experience Cloud offering with Eloqua’s cloud-based marketing automation and revenue performance management software.


suffer software malfunctions than public sector organisations. Software quality specialist SQS analysed two


RETAIL SOFTWARE GLITCH REPORTS RISE A


new study has found private business in the retail sector as being far more likely to


years’ worth of news reports about software and computer failures, covering 964 stories and 245 UK- based organisations. And, while the level of public sector computer-glitch reporting remained constant during 2011 and 2012, reports on private sector computer problems have tripled. The retail sector was the most error-prone in 2011, with 21% of all stories, while mobile followed


Following a


sophisticated cyber attack where hackers accessed two encrypted databases using a recently identified Java software flaw affecting its e-commerce web servers, Lakeland, the kitchenware retailer was praised for its pre-emptive move of deleting all customer passwords before asking customers to reset them (Lakeland confirms security breach, RetailTechnology. co.uk, 24 July 2013).


06 Autumn 2013


at 10% and banking and local government at 6% each. In 2012, even though reports of banking sector computer failures rocketed to 61% of all stories, retail still came in second accounting for 7% of glitch stories. Examples of software glitches ranged from


banking consumers being unable to access accounts to duplicate payments; while retail sector glitches include online customers overcharged, online deliveries failing to make it for Christmas, festive hampers failing to arrive, Scottish customers paying up to 70% less for their shopping, with iPads incorrectly advertised for £49.99 and bicycles for £1.


ONLINE FRAUD REMAINS RETAIL TARGET T


he latest Retail Fraud Survey from Martec International has found that one in five


retailers are not taking online fraud seriously. It revealed that, when tackling online or


multichannel fraud, retailers typically did not have a single person responsible. Instead, the responsibility was generally part of three or four people’s job descriptions. This disjointed approach resulted in 22% of respondents being unable to give a clear figure of how much their online fraud prevention costs were. Martina King, chief executive of Featurespace –


a behavioural analytics company actively involved in tackling fraud in the retail, as well as financial services and gambling sectors – commented


on the findings. “Despite advances in security technologies, fraud risks are rife and too many retailers are trying to spot potentially fraudulent customers with yesterday’s tools,” she said. “It is completely within their grasp to crack


down on this and to do it in real time, but retailers need to have faith in a fraud system that allows all customers through and identifies fraud at the end of the trading process, rather than out-of-date rules that block good customers, who are often the most valuable. To really stamp out online fraud retailers should stop relying on assumption or rules-based systems and focus on analysing actual behaviours among their customer base.”


www.retailtechnology.co.uk


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