NRF2012 Clinton & Crowds

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Arvind Gupta

NRF Post Mortem, at glance

Now that NRF 2012, also known as Retail’s Big Show has concluded, it’s time for retailers, marketers, research analysts, consultants and technology vendors to take a collective deep breath,  and reflect on the show it was, the opportunities it unraveled, the trends it highlighted and the challenges that still lay ahead of retailers.  The show, based on sheer number of participants as published by NRF, was a huge success.  No surprises here, NRF does a great job marketing the show as Mecca for breaking the retail barrier and making a splash onto to the big leagues. The show surpassed its own bigness by introducing Bill Clinton as keynote speaker on the opening day. The opulence and marketing spend exhibited by super large technology behemoths at the show is indicative of perhaps an alarming trend: is the show getting too big for its own good.  When one sees exhibitors parading magicians, models, radio talk show hosts,  coupled with promise of handing out 5$ complimentary Starbucks gift cards to coax, cajole and entice passer by simply to have a glimpse at wares on display in their booths,  something seems to have gone awry.  Pomp and show exhibited at the show appears particularly ‘out of place’ given the current economic backdrop and less than stellar US holiday season sales.  One thing the show did get right is, as it always does , bringing together retailers, lending them a platform to voice the industry concerns to policy makers in Washington, and connecting them with their current solution providers to facilitate a dialogue about collaborating to deliver ultimate consumer and associate experience.

Bill  Clinton, speech for an economic wisdom

Bill Clinton’s address was the main event among all industry sessions, and his talk did not disappoint.  For a statesman who traveled over 100 countries since his retirement from an active duty, and currently running active projects in over 70 countries, his ability to still influence state policies is astounding.  He talked about three main problems facing the world we live in: economic situation, widening gulf between rich and poor, and unsustainable production and consumption of resources. Clinton’s key to solving these problems lies in getting debt (both private and public) under control, attracting private moneys to create jobs, deeper investments in education, training, skill development and infrastructure, and to follow Brazil model of sustainable resource production and consumption policies.  His response to a question about the best advice he ever received: ‘To take criticism seriously; most people take criticism personally, therefore, they do not take it seriously.’

Delivery promises: Insufficient key driver

In terms of drivers for retail technology investment at the show, unlike previous years, there was a general lack of any specific key driver such as deadline for PCI compliance.  Among the biggest challenges that retailers are trying to get their arms around included: delivering on promise of offering an endless aisle to customer by enabling an Omni-channel shopping experience,  customer data security, making sense of data from structured and unstructured ( e.g. social media, blogs) sources,  enhancing in-store customer experience and providing productivity enhancing collaboration tools for associates.  NRF should really take a good hard look at the format of the show to ensure that the spirit of bringing retailers and solution providers together doesn’t get drowned in a drive to make the show bigger, which in turns, makes it more expensive and ‘out of reach’ to new technology start-ups who might be equipped with clever ideas to solve retailers’ future problems. In the end, for an industry responsible for creating 1 in 4 jobs in US, and a primary driver of economic growth elsewhere, Retail’s Big Show must continue to strive to truly offer a common voice to its member retailers worldwide so as to influence policy makers in implementing legislature and tax policy that will enable and encourage retail growth for all retailers.

Posted in Posts | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Jesta I.S. to launch Vision PLM at the NRF 101st Annual Convention and Expo

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Diana Ferraez

Vision PLM completes Jesta I.S.’ ERP Suite New York, NY – January 16th, 2012 – Jesta I.S., Inc. a leading global supplier of enterprise business solutions for retailers, manufacturers and distributors focused in the soft goods and specialty industries announced today that it will launch a new solution, Vision PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) at the upcoming NRF 101st Annual Convention and Expo in New York from January 16th to 17th, 2012. Vision PLM is a best of breed, full featured Product Lifecycle Management software solution. A multi-platform browser based client, it includes PDM, Merchandise Planning, Multi-level Project Management, User and Role based Calendars, Automated internal and external Notification System, Field Based Workflow management, Costing, PDM Interface Designer, Search Designer, Data Integration Manager, Document Management, On-Line Image Editing, integrated Illustrator image editing, Dynamic Reporting Tools and a full fledge Data Warehouse. Read more: http://bit.ly/VisionPLM

Posted in Posts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Top New Tech Territories for 2012

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Arvind Gupta

This is the time of year, when top consulting houses, research companies, freelancers and whoever dabbles with technology, crunch mythological numbers to declare their own prediction about the future star technologies. Encouraged by peers to take a plunge, I crunched my own numbers to reflect on technologies that should be on the investment horizon of business and technology decision makers in 2012.  Obvious suspects on every business and consumer radar should be technologies related to ‘everything mobile’, cyber retail, social media, cloud computing, and data analytics. These technologies will continue to transform our lives, and will attract a disproportionately larger share of technology investments worldwide.  Not so obvious, however, are following technology territories with a massive potential to transform our lives, and should be on radar of those laying down strategic and tactical IT roadmaps for 2012 and beyond:

1. Mobile payments will finally gain traction in the developed markets (one of the quirks of the technology evolution is that it is much easier to pay your taxi fare by mobile phone in Nairobi than in New York).  Interestingly, the biggest barrier to proliferation of mobile payments in developed world is not the technology, but it is the fight between carriers and banks over ownership of the customer.  Ultimately, customer demand will be potent enough for fostering partnerships between carriers and banks to leverage all upcoming mobile devices equipped with near field communication (NFC) chips, and to deliver mobile device payments in the hands of customers.

2. Location based services will finally be coming of age. Growing adoption of GPS services is the key driver. Initial forays by companies to offer coupons and advertisements will reach a tipping point with each social media player trying to outdo and compete with one another to integrate location with photos, status updates, recommendations and much else.

3. Connected everywhere will begin to become more real, tangible and a life changing reality. Long-Term Evolution (LTE) wireless standard will begin to get adopted by major telecommunication carriers, thus expediting the death of landline or anything hard wire connected.  Data download rates of up to 1gb/second on LTE wireless phones and devices will offer a dizzying array of possibilities for remaining connected with business peers, online gaming communities,  customer focus groups and social media communities while simultaneously indulging in any routine daily activity.

4. Augmented reality, a sci-fi trick of overlaying virtual information from the internet (or computer generated) onto a real-time view of the word, will go beyond a party trick performed with a couple of smart phone apps (e.g. Google Goggles and Wikitude) to becoming life changing commercial applications. Earliest examples of AR included displaying a yellow ‘first down’ line seen in the television broadcast of American Football, where the view of real world elements of football and players is augmented by virtual element of Yellow line.  But, with the convergence of location based and social networks information, AR offers a logical way to display information, for instance, highlighting your friends in a crowd at a festival. AR will find numerous applications in advertising, collaboration, navigation, industrial and travel among other industries.

Perhaps, a day is not far off, when trainers in an IT organization will be wearing Apple built iGlasses fitted with latest AR enriched OS, connected with their globally dispersed users, and pass out 3-D imagery instructions on how to best use their products and services.

Posted in Posts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

New York, NY – January 12th, 2012 - Jesta I.S., Inc. a leading global supplier of enterprise business solutions for retailers, manufacturers and distributors focused in the soft goods and specialty industries announced today that it has signed a channel partnership agreement with NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR), a global technology company, to offer point-of-sale (POS) solutions that are ready to implement “out-of-the-box” and combine the NCR RealPOS™ terminals and Jesta Vision Store software in the Canadian market.

Jesta I.S. joins the NCR Interact Global Partner Program, giving it access to a range of training, marketing and sales support.

“We’re looking forward to joining forces with channel partners like Jesta I.S. to make our innovative POS hardware available to a wider range of retailers,” said Linda Fitzgerald, president, NCR Canada. “The combination of Jesta’s advanced software and NCR’s robust and reliable hardware can help retailers reduce queuing and deliver the quick service consumers expect at the point of sale.” Read more …

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Diana Ferraez | Leave a comment

To Compete with Online Retail–Differentiate

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Michael Koploy

About a month ago, Amazon was a hot story among both the media and retailers across North America as it announced its latest mobile app promotion. The online retailer’s new deal offered up to $15 dollars to customers if they competitively price-checked items in the store against the Amazon.com website. Many retailers were outraged, claiming that Amazon was turning small, independent retailers into showrooms for online retailers.

Retailers can fight back, however. Not by lowering prices or by somehow disallowing customers to use the app in the store. Rather, retailers can work to recreate their stores into a memorable experience that cannot be found online. In doing so, retailers have differentiated their offering and are no longer competing against online retailers along the lines of price and convenience–where they often cannot win.

Retailers can successfully differentiate their stores with three main strategies.

1. Focus on entertainment and education within the store. Offer classes, allow customers to touch and experience products, and make the entire experience enjoyable and remarkable.

2. Streamline the store layout and inventory. Small stores do not need to carry the amount of inventory that online retailers and big box retailers offer. Rather, carrying the right inventory at multiple price points in an easy-to-find store layout is most important.

3. Hire sales associates that can be seen as likable consultants. Customers have access to product information and reviews on online retailers’ websites and manufacturers’ websites. Instead of parroting this information, sales associates should focus on being likable consultants to connect with customers looking for expert advice.

There are a number of features within point of sale solutions that can assist retailers at differentiating their stores. Some of these features include:

  • retail customer relationship management (CRM) to reach out to customers
  • maintenance, repair and service tracking to provide excellent customer service
  • inventory analysis and reporting to find the optimal inventory levels to stock
  • integrated employee management modules to hone the most successful associates

These are just a few of the features to be on the lookout for, and there are many more. Above all, retailers must focus not on where they cannot compete with online retailers, but where they successfully can.

Michael Koploy is an ERP Analyst for Software Advice, a reviewer of point of sale software (guide here). He can be reached at michael@softwareadvice.com.

Posted in Posts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Jesta I.S and Americaneagle.com offer e-commerce/mobile-enabled ERP solution Jesta I.S.’

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Diana Ferraez

Bye 2011! Welcome to 2012!  We are back and very excited with new initiatives, resolutions and we welcome our new members and partners. As a good start of the year, we have announced this week American Eagle’s partnership which outlines part of our strategy towards the retail industry.

Vision Suite goes Omni-channel New York, NY – January 4th, 2012 – Jesta I.S., Inc. a leading global supplier of enterprise business solutions for retailers, manufacturers and distributors focused in the soft goods and specialty industries announced today its partnership with Americaneagle.com, a leading Web design, development, and hosting company based in Park Ridge, Illinois, to offer a pre-integrated front-end e-commerce solution offering based upon its successful Vision Merchandising solution. The resulting offering delivers a proven e-commerce/mobile solution integrated to a comprehensive merchandising suite, allowing retailers to rapidly deploy a solid merchandising infrastructure and a comprehensive e-commerce solution…read more http://bit.ly/zHMaf3

Posted in Posts | Leave a comment

To Tweet or Not to Tweet

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Arvind Gupta

‘To tweet or not to tweet?’ is a question that is increasingly crossing minds of those, including your blogger, not yet initiated into the ultimate frontier of social media adoption, simply known as ‘Twitter’.  For an uninitiated eye, Twitter symbolizes another social media fad that is being fed on by an overzealous, attention craving, tech savvy generation Y (millennial generation born during 1980s) and Generation Z, also known as generation I or internet generation (born during and after 1990s). For Twitter sceptics, twitter will also come to pass just like other social media predecessors including ICQ, Hi5, MySpace, and Digg among many others. If last two years of worldwide growth in Twitter usage is any indication, the sceptics will not only be proven wrong but will be well advised to at least understand the twitter media so as to be able to react to it, as opposed to simply avoiding it altogether. For once, Twitter is not a ‘new kid on the block’, it was founded in 2006 and immediately revolutionized the entire overcrowded universe of social media by offering what was simply known as ‘Live Updates’. Real-time updates have since become the new norm in all social media.  Secondly, Twitter is much more than a single service channel and has emerged as a platform with a horde of product and service firms building their offerings around it. Ultimately, based on research done by internet marketing research firm ‘Digital Surgeons’, during 2010 out of 106 million total worldwide twitter users,  54% were aged 35+, 10% were aged 55+ and in total 85% of tweeters were aged 26 or higher. Furthermore, 75% of total twitter users were either in college or college grads.  This demography of Twitter adopters is generally less fickle minded and more prone to stick and embrace only when it sees substance in an offering.  In other words, twitter as a social media platform would appear to be relevant in the long run.

While Twitter offers an interactive outlet to pop stars, athletes and all those who are continuously on the move and feel lonely with an urge to connect with their followers and friends, tweeting is not without its perils. Twitter has catapulted likes of Charlie Sheen, Shaquille O’Neil, Lady Gaga among others into instant internet stardom by giving them a vehicle to share their inside story with fans. But a careless guffaw posted on twitter could turn into a massive PR nightmare, and sometimes could instantly run a carefully built reputation into ground. Etiquette around tweeting is still emerging, but as per urbandictionary.com (an online portal dedicated to tracking and updating twitter speak) some tweeting pitfalls could be overcome by avoiding common tweeting mistakes such as ‘Twitter Hubris’ (over tweeting pointless details about personal life or opinions) and becoming a ‘Tweetaholic’ (an uncontrollable urge to tweet about anything just to feel relived).

For businesses and brands Twitter offers a huge potential to connect with their customers and partners.  Beyond the obvious advantage of providing interactive feedback loop and mass publication, Twitter, when leveraged carefully could turn casual observers and followers into tightly knit communities with cult-like following. Companies like Gap, when tweeted about changing its logo, got such a massive backlash of complaints from its followers, that it decided to cancel the logo change plans overnight, resulting in millions of dollars of rebranding savings, while further cementing the brand loyalty among its customers and followers.  Companies could benefit by leveraging the analyses performed by social media data mining companies such as Lexalytics, which determines the general population sentiment based on postings on twitter.  Interestingly, Dr. Johan Bollen of Indiana University Bloomington, who collected and analyzed tweets during 2008, found a curious correlation between US nation mood (as determined by his tweets’ analysis) and the performance of Dow Jones Industrial Average. He found that national mood spikes of ‘anxiety’ were followed by predictable swings in stock price index.  Of course, Dr. Bollen has since licensed his algorithm to a London based hedge fund. That being said, companies should not simply jump on twitter bandwagon because either the competition is on it or because their customers expect them to be on it. Companies should really understand the platform first, hire a twitter coach if necessary, and then embark with a mindset of building long term relationships with their customers and partners.  So, for the ones still on the Twitter fence, a great starting point might be venturing out of their twitter closet by becoming tweet followers of favourite popular figures and brands, slowly graduating to be a tweeter, and never landing into a ‘Twitter Jail’ (a temporary lockout for overzealous types who post too many messages too quickly).

Tweet me @ag4twi.

 

Posted in Posts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Innovation trumps it All

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Arvind Gupta

Who has greater impact on society, an inventor or an innovator?

The debate has begun to get in favour of innovator due to lifelong contributions from someone named Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs and his Apple never invented anything, but found novel ways to package existing inventions in a manner which revolutionized several industries and changed our lives for better.  None of the mouse, touch screen, mp3 player, smart phone, and even PC was invented at Apple. But, Steve Jobs, who was obsessed with ultimate user experience and possessed an unprecedented panache for risk taking, metamorphosed others’ inventions into Macintosh, iPod, iPhone and iPad. Whereas invention is about creating a new idea, technology, material or molecule, the innovation is all about finding a new commercial application of an existing idea or a product.  Steve Jobs career epitomized two fundamental attributes of innovation. One, the commercial impact and success has more to do with innovation than invention.  Two, great innovations are all about trying things that have never been tried before, and therefore are inherently risky.

_________________________________

 

 

__________________________________

Innovation is not to be confused with making small incremental improvements to an existing product, process, technology or idea.

Innovation is a state of mind, and involves tremendous amount of risk taking and daring, and in nutshell, draws from an ability to see around the corners, seeing usages at consumer level that consumers themselves are not yet aware of.  One of the biggest changes that have taken place during last decade or so is in source of technology innovations. Until late 90s, most of the technological innovation came from armed forces, government funded mega research labs or from big businesses that focussed primarily on corporate customers. For example, internet was inspired by technology first developed by America’s defence research labs. But in recent years, with the rise of smart phones and tablets, the consumer markets have become the focal breeding ground of innovation. Increasingly, exciting new innovations are appearing in the hands of consumers first before making their way into other arenas. One reason for this reversal in polarity of source of innovation from business markets to consumer markets is the rising income of consumers worldwide has created a massive market for adoption of new innovative devices and technology. Another reason is the rapid spread of internet and broadband connectivity coupled with dropping prices for digital storage has transformed the landscape. There are tremendous implications of this transformation for governments, universities and big businesses, who typically went about making investments into research and development with the focus on invention of new ideas and technologies without much thought about consumers.

____________________________________

Countries and businesses are losing their competiveness due to excessive reliance on waiting for next big innovation to come from elsewhere and simply attempting to replicate already proven technologies and processes. Business innovation is the single largest source of a country’s long term economic competitiveness and prosperity.

___________________________________

Increasingly businesses are realizing the power of innovation, because innovation is not limited to a new product, but could be extended to processes and way of delivering services. For example, Amazon excelled at innovation of delivering goods to people. So then the question comes to mind is: can innovation be taught and could businesses cultivate an environment that fosters innovation. The answer thankfully is provided by Clay Christensen, a knight of Harvard Business School, in his new book titled ‘The Innovator’s DNA’. Mr Christensen essentially identifies five fundamental skills of mind that characterize innovators: association (broadening one’s experience), observations (with intent and intensity), questioning (anything and everything), networking (connecting dots when accessing new resources and people) and experimenting (deconstructing, prototyping, testing the untested). Fundamentally, anyone at a company can develop these skills given the appropriate environment albeit it just might be faster for certain gifted individuals. Companies could institutionalize these five skills in terms of incentives and rewards, cross functional collaboration, transparency, recognition and protection for bold risk takers.  In the end, the gains from innovation far exceed the seemingly unending bouts of failures before hitting the bull’s eye. Henry Ford didn’t invent the car, but his innovation of introducing the moving assembly line led to dramatic decline in car prices and produced gains to consumers that were equivalent to about 2% of US GDP in 1923.

Posted in Posts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales hit!

Posted on November 29, 2011 by Geraldine Jippe

The most awaited day of shopping season has seen miles of shoppers in a single queue ready to jump on miscellaneous promotions, offers and best deals to satisfy their craving of consumption. All indicators show a green light. Nearly 226 million shoppers visited brick-and-mortar stores and e-tails on Friday, while 2010 scored only 212 million. An average of $398.62 was spent for 2011, in comparison of $ 365.34 registered in 2010. Black Friday has surprisingly generated an online pro bonus with an average amount of $ 150.53 and scored 50 million visitors in America.

Indeed, the global online sales has  increased 16.8% surveyed e-marketer.

____________________________

Green Monday – unlikely a referral to the environment but an analogy to full money expenses – It is Cyber Monday nickname. Mashable writers syndicated that ‘Cyber Monday exceeded $1 billion’, a 16% hit in comparison with 2010. E-shoppers’ behavior demonstrate 4% online spending, a $60.05 i.e.  10 % of transaction.

 

____________________________

The main targeted goods outline jewelry as number one with a 89% growth.

Discussion  with Montreal-based retailers clerks quoted ‘If we have a Black Friday in Canada, it means something is wrong. The economic downturn is not over.’ In spite of Black Friday and Cyber Monday (aka Green Monday)  sales has recorded an unusual hike. Those two deal chases remain two days over 365 yearly day whereas it is out-of-focus to forecast holiday consumers’ behaviors.

Posted in Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Giving Thanks.

Posted on November 24, 2011 by Rick Katigbak

As we get caught up in the business of managing a  software enterprise and focus on developing solutions, holidays provide a welcome and important  break.  They allow us to reconnect with those near and dear to us and to give thanks for what we have and share.  Thank you for being part of the Jesta I.S. family and would like to wish our American clients, associates and friends a happy and safe thanksgiving holiday.

 

Posted in Posts | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment