RETAIL TECHNOLOGY RTL 2013 Retail Conference
18th April 2013
Many of Retail Technology Limited’s customers and resellers gathered for the 2013 Retail Conference at the Crowne Plaza in Birmingham.
T
he theme for the conference was “Omni- Channel retail” and the program included presentations by industry experts in buying/merchandising, social media and
search engine optimisation, ecommerce and customer loyalty. “It was time to give something back to our ever so loyal customers who run shoe and fashion stores and to inspire them to embrace technology that allows them to develop their businesses beyond bricks and mortar” says Eugenio Leijten, CEO of Retail Technology.
Buying and merchandising is a critical part of
any retail business and Alison Read from Decisions by Design showed retailers which key performance indicators to look at and when. This was related to the reports available in RTL’s retail and stock management system. Being able to automatically receive reports in one’s inbox certainly seems to be a feature that is very useful for retailers who often don’t find the time to mine information out of their systems.
Alison has considerable experience in buying
and merchandising gained whilst working for the John Lewis Partnership. An independent view on reporting really did underline the necessity for retailers to look at a small number of reports often.
26 • FOOTWEAR TODAY • JUNE/JULY 2013 Loyal customers come back and spend more
money and therefore they need to be looked after. That was the simple message about loyalty at the conference. RTL’s loyalty offering enables retailers to gather information from its customers
The fact that there is more to eCommerce than
simply to open a web store was clearly emphasised by Wayne Foster of Marketing by Web. Wayne presented a clear overview of what is required to improve one’s Google rankings. Effective use of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest can lead to improving a retailer’s presence on the web which all helps driving on-line sales be it through a web store, Amazon or eBay.
Since RTL’s retail system is powered by
Microsoft Dynamics RMS, the conference was presented with an overview of the roadmap for this Microsoft product. Microsoft is currently spending millions of dollars on its retail software offering. With such a fast changing retail environment, Microsoft is best placed to make considerable progress in increasing market share in Retail. Only software houses with huge resources will be able to keep up with retailer’s demands for integration of all sales channels on a multitude of devices.
whether they shop in store, web or through social media sites such as Facebook.
The conference was a great success and this is
what some of the delegates had to say about the event. “Very enjoyable, interesting and gave me a boost to implement new ideas and use the tools available (reports) to increase sales and footfall” and another said “Excellent day thank you all. I learnt some new things and met some really nice (and interesting) new friends. Lara and I came away 'buzzing' and raring to go with our loyalty programme. Can't wait for the future and working on new things with RTL hopefully RMSify :-)”
Since the conference, we have received great
feedback. This will enable us to organise an even better conference next year. There was a real buzz around and the positivity of retailers which has not been seen for a couple of years! The date for next year’s conference will be published shortly.
F
or further information, please contact Kim de Sylva on 0800 783 2063.
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