The 10 most recommended retail solution providers 2018

The way of business solutions

www.insightssuccess.com January 2018

10

The

Most Recommended

Solution Providers 2018

Retail Insights Customer Experience through an Agile Retail Technology Platform

Industry Trends Key POS Trends Reshaping the Retail Sector Company of the Month

DigiPerspective Retail in the Digital Age: Focusing on the Three Things

Ashley La mer

Chas Wurster

Founder & Chairman

Chief Technology Ofď€ cer

Trade Link Retail Systems: A Renowned Partner for Retail Solutions

Editor’s Note

The Changing Phase of the Retail Industry

I

n 2018, the act of buying commodities (i.e. buying things because we HAVE to) will become less of a chore. Players like Amazon and subscription businesses will make this part of retail easier through offerings like auto-renewals, one-tap purchases, and same-day delivery. In other words, the “chore” or routine component of shopping will become more streamlined.

Meanwhile, the experiential side of retail — the part that involves discovering great products and socializing with others — won’t be going away. People will still make their way to physical stores, not because they want to “buy stuff,” but because they want to get experiences that they won’t find anywhere else. Personalization will still be a key retail trend in 2018 and beyond. We’re not just talking about putting someone’s name in an email subject line or letting customers put their initials on products. We’re referring to personalization that enables shoppers to build products and customize them to the very last detail.

The big trend I see is that retailers are finally realizing that they must change. For many years, leaders of the retail industry were averse to change – they wanted everything to be smooth and as long as they beat “last year,” they were happy.

This is no longer possible.

In the past, it was the retailer who determined what a customer should want to buy and how they should shop. Today, it’s the customer who are defining the shopping experience. And a retailer is missing opportunities for sales when it operates in the traditional silos that kept merchandise categories and selling channels separate rather than coordinated.

The acceptance of omni-channel trade and digital savvy merchandising is important. Today it is a requirement for success. However, it is not only acceptance of new ideas, but I also see the need to review old systems and procedures. Store operations and mindsets must change.

Some have assumed that Amazon is going to kill the industry that everything will be bought online.

Well, as we have recently seen, it’s not that simple. On one side, we see stores like Walmart waking up and moving aggressively into the same online arena. And, Amazon is redefining itself as well. I am not surprised that Amazon is opening some stores and buying companies like Whole Foods to gain dominance. I do believe that they will be a strong player but will not eliminate good competition.

2017 was the year of digital discovery. 2018 will be the year of technology and more integration of it into mainstream retail. It will be the year where we see retailers create new operating models that are less focused on their store vs. the web and more focused on creating experiences that gives customers more control and convenient ways to shop. I think it will be an exciting year where customers will find newness and creativity.

I predict that most well-funded retailers and department stores will adjust and survive. They will slim down further and concentrate on destination mega-malls. They will attract customers because they know fashion, have the brands that appeal, learn to have quicker turnover of their assortment and add innovations that take hold.

So, with great enthusiasm Insights Success has selected some of the most prominent organizations around the globe in the issue of “The 10 Most Recommended Retail Solution Providers 2018.”

These organizations are transforming the retail industry with their revolutionary innovations and foremost initiatives that mainly focus on the product acceleration and customer satisfaction.

The journey starts with the Cover Story Trade Link Retail Systems(Pty) Ltd., a leading South African Retail IT Solutions group, focusing primarily on the retail Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) markets in RSA and Africa, as well as specialized retailing markets.

Then we have our Company of the Month, PAR Technology Corporation, which is an industry leader in systems and service solutions for the hospitality industry.

We also have Antivia, an international software company who is also the creator of DecisionPoint™, fast, modern business intelligence (BI) platform that enables non-programmers to create stunning dashboard applications and interactive dashboards for mobile devices and the desktop; Celerant Technology Corp, who develops innovative retail and E-Commerce software with a mission to help retailers grow their business and manage every aspect of their operations with a single integrated platform; Interactive Edge LLC, an organization which helps in combining a commanding data analysis engine with flexible, easy-to-use front end tools; moreover, their BI platform helps in improving the quality and improvement in speed of data vigorous PowerPoint Presentations and Excel Reports; Shamrock Consulting Group, whose core consulting focus is telecom, data center, cloud and fiber-related. Shamrock does everything from writing and running complex RFP’s for larger opportunities, to simple shopping for smaller clients; KPS AG, which is a transformation and management firm in Europe, that provides solutions in IT management services.

Also, while flipping the pages of the magazine don’t forget to go through Retail Insights- Customer Experience through an Agile Retail Technology Platform; DigiPerspective- Retail in the Digital Age: Focusing on the Three Things.

We have also incorporated, Industry Trends- Key POS Trends Reshaping the Retail Sector; Actionable- Retail Industry: Trends, Insights, and Best Practices.

Piyush Rishi

CONTENTS 08

Cover Story

Trade Link Retail Systems: A Renowned Partner for Retail Solutions

Articles 22

Actionable

30

Industry Trends

Retail Industry: Trends, Insights, and Best Practices

Key POS Trends Reshaping the Retail Sector

CXO

34

24

40

Expert’s Viewpoint

Retail Insights

DigiPerspective

Legal Practices Providing Real Value to the Clients

Customer Experience through an Agile Retail Technology Platform

Retail in the Digital Age: Focusing on the Three Things

16

Company of the Month

PAR Technology: Software Solutions for the Food Retailers Antivia: Enabling Non-Programmers to Create Stunning Dashboard Applications

20 Celerant Technology Corp: Developing Retail and E-Commerce Software in the Retail World

28 KPS AG: Enriching Business Operations with Priceless

32

Experience and Insights

Interactive Edge: Transforming Technology for Faster and Deeper Insights

36 Shamrock Consulting Group: Offering Reliable Solutions for

42

Telecom, Data Center, Cloud and Fiber Verticals at the Guaranteed Best Price

Editor-in-Chief Pooja M. Bansal Senior Editor Anish Miller Managing Editor Piyush Rishi Executive Editors Sourav Mukherjee Jenny Fernandes Assistant Editors Brian Smith Ajit Balkawade Visualiser David King Art & Design Director Amol Kamble Associate Designer Vijaykumar Dudhbhate Co-designer Shweta Ambilwade Art & Picture Editor Paul Belin Jayant Khanna Senior Sales Manager Abhijeet Mehra Business Development Manager Peter Collins Marketing Manager John Matthew Business Development Executives Steve, Joe, Rick, Vishal Sales Executives David, Kevin, Eric, Prathamesh Technical Head Jacob Smile Technical Specialist Amar, Pratiksha Digital Marketing Manager Marry D’Souza Online Marketing Strategist Alina Sege, Shubham Mahadik, Vaibhav K SME-SMO Executives Prashant Chevale, Uma Dhenge, Gemson Research Analyst Chidiebere Moses Circulation Manager Robert, Tanaji Database Management Stella Andrew Technology Consultant David Stokes sales@insightssuccess.com

January, 2018 Corporate Ofces: Insights Success Media Tech LLC 555 Metro Place North, Suite 100, Dublin, OH 43017, United States Phone - (614)-602-1754 Email: info@insightssuccess.com For Subscription: www.insightssuccess.com

Insights Success Media and Technology Pvt. Ltd. Ofce No. 510, 513 5th Floor, Rainbow Plaza, Shivar Chowk, Pimple Saudagar, Pune, Maharashtra 411017 Phone - India: 020-69400110, 111, 112 Email: info@insightssuccess.in For Subscription: www.insightssuccess.in

Copyright © 2018 Insights Success, All rights reserved. The content and images used in this magazine should not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission from Insights Success.

Reprint rights remain solely with Insights Success.

Ashley La mer Founder & Chairman

Cover Story

Solution Providers 2018

Trade Link

Retail Systems: A Renowned Partner for Retail Solutions

Cover Story

T

rade Link Retail Systems (Pty) Ltd (Trade Link) has been at the forefront of supplying the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) industry in Southern Africa with tailored Point-of-Sale (POS) solutions for the last 25 years, their experience has allowed them to grow with their clients and provide valuable services, from POS hardware and software systems and support, integrating into the retailer back office and head office functions. Driven by technology, the Trade Link is able to provide a full-service solution for retail needs, driving customer sales with integrated banking and e-commerce, loyalty and reward systems and a seamless management tool to cover the full business cycle. Trade Link is able to offer software development and project management expertise allowing their customers to remain at the forefront of their markets through service excellence.

Due to a South African recessionary climate, retailers are experiencing a real slowdown (growth) in traditional consumer spending patterns and are looking for more return on a declining market from their IT partners. Trade Link is not only aware of this statistic but ensuring that the retailer client is receiving more “bang for buck” through innovative and cost-efficient systems, relative to customer spend.

Simply put, Trade Link seeks to stretch the consumer value add and experience whilst not adding to the bottom line cost for the retailer using innovative data and systems analytics, new age loyalty and rewards systems.

for cash register products, solutions and services. They were offered POS software to take Trade Link into the POS PC-based market, out of the old Cash Register domain, including the ability for stores to scan items at their checkouts.

The POS software, POSition, from Nixdorf had been developed by an Israel Software company, Retalix, and was already well established around the world. They were awarded a pilot installation by The SPAR Group, using Nixdorf Hardware, enabling the store to go the Scanning route for pricing (as opposed to price marking each item in the store) and this pilot store was successfully installed in May 1995.

Trade Link grew from that small beginning to eventually cover the entire SPAR group of stores in Southern Africa, through successive versions of the original Retalix POS software with open POS hardware (any qualified and approved hardware) to today, with over 1 500 SPAR Member stores using 13,000 POS software licences and a now different software product called “dStore” developed in Austria and owned by Oracle US.

Fascinating Journey of Trade Link

In 2000 Shoprite Checkers came on board, using Trade Link to install and support the same original POS software till today, with 25 000 POS software licences installed in South Africa and many other African countries. Other similar POS solutions have been installed by Trade Link in SA (Clicks) and in Zimbabwe (OK Zimbabwe, TM Supermarkets, and Meikles) and in Kenya (Uchumi) and Mozambique. Food Lovers Market have been brought into the fold.

The start was in mid-1994 from an existing business; Positron which was a cash-register based company, based in Durban, Kwazulu Natal and addressing the general Retail market

By branching out into software Development (maintaining the original software source code for the developers) as well as offering POS Hardware Maintenance services and

many other complementary products and services surrounding the key store checkout POS point, they are exporting their solution beyond Africa and into the Europe market and even to the Middle East, having translated the same POS software to offer an Arabic language version.

Trade Link is supporting some 3000 stores, using around 40 000 POS software licences all installed and supported by them. Trade Link has formed separate service companies to

be able to focus on each of their specific clients’ needs and provide them specialized and tailored service solutions, including companies in Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. They are now branching into Sri Lanka with the SPAR group, as they open their first stores there.

local staff on the many and varied POS-services required to service a modern high-tech POS Checkout point in sophisticated urban environments and also spread out into the rural and far-flung places in Africa where their solution is ticking away daily, 24/7 over these past 23 years.

Enthralling Personality Leading the Retail System Market

Ashley came out of a life-long IT background mainly spent at IBM SA and in Europe and mainly in the Services business – away from the pure hardware side which used to be the strongpoint of IBM. Having grown up in “Solutions and Services” this remains our lifeblood still today, offering POS Solutions and Services of Customer choice and on any compatible Hardware platforms.

Ashley Lattimer, Founder and Chairman started it all in 1994, with a small dedicated group of staff, some still with us even today. From that small beginning of around 6 people they employ some 250 staff today and work closely with many Strategic Partners employing 100’s more related

We concentrate on the full retail cycle for your business, providing full stock and sales management at your branches, head office and distribution centers

From a largely family-owned business Ashley is now in the process of handing over within a succession plan to a new Executive team: Ahmed Laher, their Group CEO and his team will steer the company into the future with new energy and ideas, while keeping their core commitment to providing the best service and products to their valued clients.

Key Attributes helping Trade Link overcome challenges Trade Link is not a “box-seller” – rather a builder of solutions within their chosen market, which they offer with full accompanying services, they consider the hardware and software needs of their clients, their development and retail cycles, new technologies and ways of doing business and integrating features which give their customers real competitive advantage.

Their success in times of challenges can be put down to offering good value for investment for their clients, responding timeously to their needs and ensuring their support for their systems is always available, as down time in this industry is a killer for both their clients as well as service providers.

Trade Link runs with a small, flat management structure, never far from the coal face where the customer operates.

The organization is not office-bound and use modern technology and operating procedures to ensure they are able to be support their clients well within their Service Level Agreements (SLA) levels, for both urban and rural based stores. They maintain an entrepreneurial approach to all opportunities and are quick to respond to challenges, internal and external.

Key Industry scenario point of view Due to the fast pace of innovation and technology advancement, Trade Link is always monitoring the retail industry for new trends and ways to give their customers competitive advantages. Software development of new services for their clients (rewards and loyalty systems, data aggregation and monitoring client preferences through their shopping habits) is an important feature for maintaining advantage in the FMCG industry, which they are able to develop specific solutions tailored for their client needs.

Ensuring a stable platform for their POS systems, and to maintain the organization’s system to be able to deal with high-volume traffic at the checkouts is an important and basic function. They have recently been able to offer full hardware support on their POS systems, as well as the integrated banking and back office equipment. This allows the customer to deal with one supplier for all their front and back office needs.

Working Environment at Trade Link They encourage their staff to improve their skills through constant in-house and external training (including management training as people get promoted), to provide channels for dialog on all levels, working on an open-door style where everyone is heard and has their say.

Their staff are empowered to focus on the job and the customer services they provide, allowing them a wide area of latitude when it comes to work times and locations, as lot of the work is done out of the office. They have developed applications which improves communications when staff is on the road, providing tools and information to simplify their work and daily schedules.

Trade link also believes in transformation in South Africa, and has a significant Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) rating, this approach guides them in hiring and providing training to the staff, and assisting their suppliers and entrepreneurs with whom they do business. They have built up their management and

Cover Story operational staff with skills and an outlook for supporting the communities they live in.

Road Ahead The Trade Link Group looks forward to introducing new technologies and services to our clients (E-commerce, data aggregation) while also offering online marketing and applications with our new acquisition to the group. We wish to consolidate our position within the POS market worldwide, with our strategic partners and suppliers allowing us to look further afield to Africa, Europe and the Middle East with new customers.

Significant Advice from Trade Link Trade Link advice to budding entrepreneurs includes keeping your business model simple and focused on your clients and the industry you operate in. Use and expand on modern technology, but don’t lose your core strengths of looking after your customers basic needs (a secure POS environment, and no downtime in our industry). Research new tools and choose wisely which you chose to integrate with your products, always find the value in what you have chosen to offer to your clients.

Know your customer (and understand their client needs), never forget the basics which allow them to succeed and be flexible in your offerings and their requests. Instil your company work ethic and culture into all your staff and look after the people who make us a success.

We ensure a centralized control over all your retail operations

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Company Name

Management

Brief

Agilence agilenceinc.com

Russ Hawkins President & CEO

Agilence is the leader in Cloud-Based Data Analytics for store operations and loss prevention.

Antivia antivia.com

Mark Hudson CEO & Founder

Antivia is an international software company and is the creator of DecisionPoint™, fast, modern business intelligence (BI) platform that enables non-programmers to create stunning dashboard applications and interactive dashboards for mobile devices and the desktop.

Celerant Technology Corp celerant.com

Ian Goldman CEO & President

Celerant Technology develops innovative retail and ECommerce software with a mission to help retailers grow their business and manage every aspect of their operations with a single integrated platform.

Interactive Edge LLC interactiveedge.com

Zel Bianco Co-founder, President & CEO

Interactive Edge helps in combining a commanding data analysis engine with flexible, easy-to-use front end tools; moreover, their BI platform helps in improving the quality and improvement in speed of data vigorous PowerPoint Presentations and Excel Reports.

KPS AG kps.com

Leonardo Musso CEO

KPS AG is a transformation and management firm in Europe, which provides solutions in IT management services.

PAR Technology Corporation partech.com

Chas Wurster Chief Technology Officer

PAR Technology Corporation is an industry leader in systems and service solutions for the hospitality industry.

Salesboom.com salesboom.com

Troy Muise CEO & Co-founder

Salesboom.com offers a fully integrated Affordable Best in class Hosted CRM software solution with Outlook, QuickBooks, Invoicing, Quoting & Project Management.

Shamrock Consulting Group shamrockconsulting.com

Paul Cooney Founder & CEO

Shamrock Consulting Group’s core consulting focus is telecom, data center, cloud and fiber-related. Shamrock does everything from writing and running complex RFP’s for larger opportunities, to simple shopping for smaller clients

Solid Commerce solidcommerce.com

Erik Simon VP, Marketing

Solid Commerce helps its clients to grow their marketplace sales by providing the most integrated Software as a Service (SaaS) eCommerce operations platform coupled with Marketplace Growth Advisors dedicated to your success.

Trade Link Retail Systems (Pty) Ltd. trade-link.co.za

Ashley Lattimer Founder & Chairman

Trade Link is one of the leading South African Retail IT Solutions group, focusing primarily on the retail Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) markets in RSA and Africa, as well as specialized retailing markets.

T

he retail industry is in the middle of a transformative phase with changing consumer behaviors, a rapidly evolving set of enabling technologies, and growing complexity. Through all of this, their customers and partners rely on PAR Technology Corp. to help them to be successful in this evermore-challenging environment.

PAR Technology: Software Solutions

PAR Technology is a conscious company with a strong culture where performance management is a way of life. The people of PAR are the inspiration for the creation of their shared core values: People, Authenticity, Awareness, Perseverance, and Dreaming.

These values aid in talent retention and employee engagement among Millennials, GenX and Baby Boomers. PAR people believe that they are the servant leaders, and their stakeholder responsibility ethos is well understood across the company.

The organization is on a journey to transform PAR from a hardware and service provider, to a software lead solutions company. Central to this journey are the cloud-based Brink POS® Software and the SureCheck® Food Safety Platform. By combining their long-standing quality hardware product lines, with innovative Cloud and IoT technologies, PAR is able to rapidly introduce solutions to the market to support their customers ranging in size from single locations, to some of the fastest-growing and most respected restaurant chains and food retailers in the world.

About PAR Technology Corporation

for Food Retailers

16

For nearly 40 years, PAR has developed technology solutions for food-based retail companies such as restaurants, grocery chains, convenience stores and contract food providers.

With POS systems in more than 75,000 restaurants and over 110 countries, PAR is redefining the point of sale to bring technological innovation to all aspects of the business. PAR’s POS software is complemented by reliable hardware and is backed by PAR’s international services infrastructure.

In addition to PAR’s hospitality solutions, it is a leading provider of technical solutions to the government sector. PAR’s Government business is a wholly owned subsidiary of PAR Technology Corporation and is comprised of PAR Government Systems Corporation and Rome Research Corporation. PAR’s Government business delivers innovative information management solutions through advanced technology and professional services to Federal, State, and local Government agencies, as well as private industry customers throughout the world. | January 2018 |

Company of the Month

PAR Technology Corporation stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol PAR. Charles “Chas” Wurster is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at PAR Chas joined PAR in 2017 as Chief Technology Officer and brings to PAR experience and perspective gained from working as an entrepreneur and at Fortune 500 companies. As CTO, Chas leads the software and hardware development teams, as well as product management, across all product lines. Below are Chas’’ insights on the industry and the exciting things PAR is working on.

Industry Disruption On the POS side, payments remain an area of disruption, both from the point of view of security, as well as emerging technologies. There is a constant stream of press around compromised payment systems that should be concerning to anyone in the space. On the technology side, PAR sees less than half of the restaurants with payment entry devices, which enable not just Apple Pay and Android Pay, but also EMV chip cards to be processed. The impacts of changing consumer behavior goes well beyond mobile payments. They also see disruption from meal kits, delivery options, kiosks and other self-ordering solutions. The challenge for the restaurant industry will be to balance these emerging consumer trends with the overall goal of producing exceptional food and delighting the customer.

Another challenge the industry faces is keeping up with reporting and food safety. There is a continuing proliferation of pen and paper reports out in the industry that is ripe for the transition to digital. As old school pen and paper checklists move to digital, it introduces the ability to verify that the activity was performed at the right time and in the right place.

Included in the transition to digital recording are a number of improvements to temperature monitoring.

PAR’s SureCheck platform offers not just checklists, but also the ability to take temperature measurements with their best in class, dedicated and all-in-one

| January 2018 |

Chas Wurster Chief Technology Ofcer devices. By leveraging Cloud technologies, all the compliance and food safety data can be sent to the Cloud where it can be analyzed for trends and leveraged to generate compliance reports.

Competitors In general, PAR has two types of competitors – large, mature companies that are still struggling to get to the Cloud, and venture backed startups targeted at smaller or single unit concepts that, while well-funded, do not have a long history of being able to scale and deliver value over time.

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Benefiting Clients PAR's clients get best in class hardware, combined with industry leading Cloud systems. This unique combination allows their clients to get everything they need to run their business from one trusted partner. PAR also has a robust ecosystem of partners who provide additional services through their application programming interfaces (APIs).

With the entire customer’s data is in the Cloud, it is significantly easier to perform updates, analyze data and trends, provision users, and add new features.

‘‘

People don't buy goods

and service; they buy

‘‘

Technology systems, like point of sale and food safety, tend to have a relatively long expected lifespan compared to the longevity of typical venture backed offerings. While a consumer may enjoy trading out their iPad for a new one every year, it can be incredibly disruptive for a restaurant to replace infrastructure.

relations and stories

Strategizing the Success through Risk There are a number of other competitors in the space.

PAR’s strategy to address competition is to focus on delivering a quality product at a competitive price point without any gimmicks or hidden fees. By renewing their focus on quality, providing their technical staff with a work environment that fosters innovation, and partnering with their customers to understand their needs, they believe that the organization would outperform their competition.

Making the Industry Better As a proponent of secure Cloud and IoT solutions, PAR is focused on enabling their customers to do more with the technology they have, while also creating an environment that allows new technology to be seamlessly introduced. By providing real-time access to data across all locations, trends can be identified instantly and corrective actions can be taken immediately. They also work with their customers on risk assessments and make recommendations to improve the overall security of their payment systems. On the food safety side, they are literally making the industry safer by introducing technology to ensure proper refrigeration and food preparation across a number of verticals, from grocers, to convenience stores and everything in between.

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Looking Ahead In the next few years, PAR continues its growth in traditional markets, while introducing some innovative new products and enhancements. The Brink POS Software and PAR hardware teams are very excited to be working in tandem on a refresh of their kitchen operations and kitchen video systems. As they look to the future, they see more demand for self-service ordering from mobile, kiosks, voice recognition and beyond. To facilitate this, and integrations with 3rd party delivery services, PAR is highly focused on improving developer partnership programs and making APIs easier to leverage and integrate with. Lastly, PAR is excited to be working on some payment related offerings that are expected to be commercialized in early 2018.

| January 2018 |

The 10 Most Recommended

Retail

Antivia:

Enabling Non-Programmers to Create Stunning Dashboard Applications

R

etailers operate in a challenging environment. They face multiple challenges in the form of intense competition, low profit margins and ever changing customer preferences. To survive from all these, they need to make some smart decisions based on up-to-date and accurate data, rather than just on gut feel.

Antivia is an international software company, and is the creator of DecisionPoint™, a fast, modern business intelligence (BI) platform that enables non-programmers to create stunning dashboard applications and interactive dashboards for mobile devices and desktop. These dashboard applications can be shared with frontline decision makers who can pick them up and use them without training to answer their daily and one-off questions - wherever they are located.

Antivia was founded in 2007 in Leeds, UK and since then their software has helped 100s of organizations around the world to unlock the value trapped in their business data.

Antivia is part of the insightsoftware.com family; they were acquired in September 2016.

Promising Services of Antivia DecisionPoint™ enables retailers to create and share guided insights with store managers, category managers, supply chain managers, procurement managers and anyone else who needs them.

• Create and share retail analytics that match your business processes DecisionPoint™ combines information from multiple data sources to provide the big picture view on inventory levels, supply chain movements, customer demand, sales, etc.

Choose from over 50 components to visualize the data.

Drag and drop to layout. Calculate key performance indicators. Add sophisticated filters, drill, custom workflows, and color-coded alerts. Apply a custom creative

20

theme that mirrors the brand and helps drive high levels of adoption.

• Get guided insights into the hands of the people who need them Delivering retail analytics through customized dashboard apps that are tailor-made for people’s roles gives them the flexibility and autonomy they are looking for. These apps guide people through the KPIs and metrics that are most important to their success. With DecisionPoint™, they can analyze data by drilling through product hierarchies or filtering to compare individual stores or markets across selected time periods.

• Share information with more people across your organization DecisionPoint™ scales cost-effectively, to deliver fast response times for large numbers of users from a modest hardware footprint. In a distributed retail environment, it lets you share information with everyone who needs it.

Sales assistants in store may want to see how their department is performing against target on a big wallmounted screen.

And, DecisionPoint™ provides complete offline access to information when they have no network access. It works across Windows, Android and Apple devices. So, you can be confident that your people will always have access to the information which they need.

Backbone of Antivia Mark Hudson, CEO and Founder has over 20 years’ of vast experience in the business intelligence world in operational, leadership and product management roles.

A serial entrepreneur, Mark sold his first venture, Blue Edge Software, to Business Objects (now owned by SAP) in 2001. He then spent a number of years working for Business Objects in senior roles within the Product Group and latterly as Business Development Director and member of the management team in Australia.

| January 2018 |

Mark Hudson CEO & Founder

‘‘

When you can’t guarantee network connectivity for mobile workers, allow them to take all the information they need o line with 1-click - giving them fully interactive access to their information whenever they need it

‘‘

After leaving BusinessObjects, Mark joined the Executive Team at Edgewing, a data integration specialist, as Business Development Director.

After Edgewing was acquired by Business Objects, Mark left to set up Antivia.

From his early days as a business intelligence consultant back in the mid -1990s, Mark has always believed that the value of information increases the greater the number of people who have access to it. Yet, many people in organizations still lack access to timely, relevant information delivered in a format that works for them.

The majority of BI and analytic software has been developed to serve the needs of the data analysts within organizations. Yet, data analysts only represent 5-10% of workers who need access to information. Other people – including front-line workers like store managers and category managers in

| January 2018 |

retail - still don’t have easy access to the data they need to make smart, informed decisions and to take the most appropriate action. Mark established Antivia to support the needs of these people who have historically been underserved by information.

Challenges Faced by Antivia during their Business Days When Antivia started out they focused on the SAP world, because this is a market they know well. At the time they added value to SAP’s dashboard technology – making dashboard designers more productive and making it easier for them to work with enterprise data sources.

But, SAP Dashboards was based on Adobe’s Flash technology and as the market shifted to mobile, Flash very quickly became yesterday’s technology. From this point, the writing was on the wall for SAP Dashboards. That’s when they took the

decision to become a BI platform in their own right, developing their own design tool to create dashboard applications against their existing back-end technology.

This allowed them to design a product from ground up for needs of the mobile world. And, that is why one of the key benefits of DecisionPoint™ is in its offline capability. This is a key requirement for mobile workers. With DecisionPoint™, mobile workers can still interact with their content – drilling and filtering even when they are offline. There is no need for them to second guess the content they will need before they hit the road.

Future Executions by Antivia The organization plans to continue to help retailers create and share analytics that everyone can understand and act upon. They pride themselves on being responsive to their customers’ needs and this has a big influence on their product roadmap.

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Actionable

Retail Industry Trends, Insights, and Best Practices

W

hen we ponder the traditional shopping experience, we realize how far we have come in the customer service with the developments in the retail industry. These evolutions came into the picture not only because of the technological advancements, but the radical changes in our thoughts, behavior, and decisionmaking towards shopping also brought them in. Today’s retail is aimed to serve the consumers in the most convenient ways. “Sorry for the inconvenience,” neither retailers like to say this nor customers like to hear this.

Thus, the retail industry embraces advanced technologies and wows the customers with innovative options, widgets, and other means. Today’s customers demand that retailers should be able to immediately fulfill as well as predict their needs. With current trends in the industry, this transformation is possible.

Trends When it comes to the shopping trends, Amazon appears as a game changer. It offers exceptional services to the

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customers such as member discounts and same-day delivery. Its great customer services, competitive pricing, and reliable user reviews and support are well-known worldwide. Amazon’s new feature Echo (Alexa) is trending these days, which makes shopping virtually effortless. Echo knows the customers’ buying history and preferences based on which Alexa offers daily promotions and special deals.

Although online shopping is getting popular, brick and mortar shops still stay relevant. Many shoppers want to try the products hands-on before they buy. These customers can be found searching “locations near me” online. Therefore, brands are expanding their stores to the new locations.

Moreover, Location based targeting is dominating in the retail. Geo-fencing and Geo-targeting use GPS to send out push notifications and messages to those who have the apps downloaded. For instance, as soon as you arrive in the parking lot, you get a tailored message from the nearest store. Geo-fencing is like location-based advertising irrespective of the customers’ interests, while Geo-targeting involves different interests and needs to target users. | January 2018 |

Virtual shopping is what shoppers are waiting for. The retailers will cater holograms and virtual reality displays, enhancing the in-store experience. It would be amazing to try on an outfit in the virtual environment without changing clothes. The retailers will provide GPS tracking for shipping or delivery. Using GPS tracker, customers will get to know exactly where their product is on the route. The retailers are encouraging consumers to post reviews for the products they are purchasing. For a reason, new buyers rely on the product reviews more and trust in the consumers' community.

Insights A report says that almost seven in ten get influenced by their friends’ social media posts; 83 percent people trust recommendations from their family and peers. They discover the products online before going out to the shop.

Therefore, the retailers need to create a seamless chain between online and on-site shopping. Virtual reality, social shopping, and other services can help consumers find the product, access reviews, and locate stores to buy.

Best Practices The retail sector requires deploying the best practices to cope with the advancements. These different practices are applied in different phases- before the sale, during the sale, and after the sale.

Front door analytics are needed to understand the traffic and demographics. In this phase, retailers should capture conversion rates, the frequency of visit, and duration of visit for every store hourly. The staff selection should be based on traffic or transactions, and the staff scheduling should be based on the data from interaction analysis.

Traffic type (first-time visitors or repeat customers) also can be analyzed before the sale. | January 2018 |

The traditional purchase experience was controlled by retailers’ systems (call forwarding system) during the sale.

But today customers control the purchase experience with online payments, mobile POS, and mobile payments. The retailers should give a reason to visit the store that can lead to customer satisfaction. Also, asking for feedback helps in building good rapport and gaining insights.

After the sale strategies play the crucial role in building brands. There are lots of ways available that can be utilized for customer retention such as social media, CRM system, and Email marketing. Rather than offering discount coupons with low conversions and thin margins, retailers should focus on delivering offers based on customers’ profiles and purchase history. These offers should be delivered through customers’ preferences (Email, mobile, etc.), and develop a very personal customer experience.

New formats for the stores are based on Artificial Intelligence (AI), helping the retail industry to gain more insights. With video analytics, the retailers can understand the shopping flow, such as how customers shop and engage with the products. Customers look for the value and variety of the products and experience the speed and ease of checkout at the stores, whether it is online or offline. No wonder, the retailers who accept more payment methods get the attention of more customers.

Along with the developments in technology, marketing processes are getting refined and automated. Marketing automation has the entire pipeline to convert a visitor into a customer and consequently to generate more revenue. The retail industry can use these processes to resolve the complexities of consumers’ behavior, making it easier to predict their needs. The focus, which is majorly on providing sophisticated customer service, should equally be of customer satisfaction by providing convenience.

23

Expert’s Viewpoint

Legal Practices Providing Real Value to the Clients

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| January 2018 |

W

e know how a great client experience feels. A quick email reply from a business makes us feel like we are their only customer. The convenience of online checkin for a flight provides a seamless airport experience. Successful companies provide a great client experience – Apple, Amazon, Air New Zealand. You’d be forgiven if law firms don’t make your list.

In 2017, the average Net Promoter Score for client satisfaction for law firms was 17%. Lawyers are good at meticulously drafting legal documents and solving problems for their clients. We view our ‘product’ as the legal contract or advice.

But the product of any professional service should be the entire experience of interacting with the service provider.

A law firm that prioritises delivering an exceptional experience will attract more clients and earn stronger loyalty. Firms that disregard their clients’ evolving expectations will be left behind.

The Difference Between Client Service and Client Experience We hear people use client service and client experience interchangeably. But there is an important difference.

When a client calls a law firm, a lawyer may pick up the phone, warmly greet the client and listen to their issue. This is client service. But if a lawyer tells the client they will follow up later, and forgets to call back for a month, this would sour the client’s overall experience.

Client service is then about the individual interactions a client has with your business. Client experience is the sum of all the client’s touch points with your business.

What Makes an Exceptional Experience?

We’ve likely encountered law firm marketing that touts some variation on these common themes: • Legal expertise and industry knowledge; • Practical and commercial solutions; and • Professional service.

But these traits simply meet the base expectations that clients have for their lawyer. An exceptional client experience should exceed these expectations.

In our short history, focusing on these five pillars has enabled us to deliver an excellent client experience. | January 2018 |

About Author Jacqueline is the Head of Client Care at LegalVision, Australia’s fastest growing tech-driven law firm. She holds the degree of graduate lawyer in legal practices and General Legal Practice Specialization in Corporate and Commercial Law from Bond University.

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1. Eam dedicated to the Client Experience In the same way that law firms have teams dedicated to producing legal work or marketing campaigns, so too do organisations need a team that has the client experience front of mind.

The role of the client experience (CX) team is to ensure the client’s journey with your organisation is as consistent and frictionless as possible. This requires the Client Experience Officer (CXO) to identify the barriers that could prevent lawyers delivering a great experience.

For instance, a lawyer has competing priorities - speaking with a client about their legal matter, creating and sending the invoice and completing the legal work. As a result, they may be slower in responding to a client’s questions, forget to update a client on next steps or sound rushed on a phone call.

The CXO, recognising that delays in communication will impact the client’s experience, can then work across teams and design solutions to these delays, such as: • separating service delivery functions; • training specialist legal project managers to respond to client enquiries; and • creating invoice templates to increase efficiency.

2. Personalising Service Historically, law firms viewed the client’s journey from a lawyer’s perspective. This included how we spoke with clients on the phone, drafted correspondence and billed for legal work. Law firms can better tailor their service offering by working with clients on their terms. This involves: • Meeting clients where they are (online and mobile); • Mirroring the language and tone clients use in verbal and written communication; • Listening to their choice of words to gauge their level of legal and commercial knowledge; • Offering flexible billing options; and • Setting out what scope of work is included in the price.

How a lawyer makes a client feel can either overwhelm the client and deter them from proceeding with the legal assistance they need, or energise a client about the next steps in their business’ journey.

3. Ask for - and act on - feedback when it’s provided Clients can more easily check the reviews of the legal service your firm provides online – the lawyer’s demeanour, the usefulness of the advice, the speed of their replies and

26

the cost. Your legal team and CX team should collect feedback at all stages of the client’s journey with your firm using Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys, social media reviews and phone calls for qualitative feedback.

Don’t ignore this feedback. Part of the CX team’s role is to action feedback from your clients to make your processes easier, faster and more enjoyable. Sometimes, a client may leave a negative review online. As a first step, it’s important to speak with the client to better understand the nature of their complaint. If the complaint stems from an internal process or procedure, this may require assessing the existing framework and making changes within the team.

4. Provide real value for clients Law firms now too often focus on providing legal services at a competitive price. But a CXINLAW report found that 60% of clients say the quality of service most informs their purchase, and 25% say the cheapest price. When choosing a legal services provider, we know that cost is a factor for clients. But it's not the determinative factor.

The perception of value and quality is central to client satisfaction and loyalty. Value is multifaceted and encompasses technical advice, the ease of the experience, communication about the process and usefulness of the advice. For example, a lawyer writes an article explaining in plain English the function of a shareholders’ agreement and its terms. The lawyer then shares the article with a prospective client. This adds value because the client can read the article, in their own time, and decide whether the document is most appropriate for their business and circumstance. This gives the client control over the decision-making process and demonstrates the lawyer’s subject-matter expertise.

5. Anticipate the client’s needs Law firms can now access tools to collect and record information about their clients’ businesses, industries and legal enquiries. This information reveals patterns about what a client likely needs next in their business’ journey.

For instance, a busy client may engage your firm to help with business structuring. But if you know that other clients of a similar size and in a similar industry started thinking about registering a trade mark in eight months, you can pre-empt a conversation about protecting the business’ intellectual property. This may not be at the front of the client’s mind, but they'll appreciate you sharing your experience about similar businesses. You may also just save them from landing in an uncomfortable trade mark dispute.

| January 2018 |

The 10 Most Recommended

Retail Celerant Technology Corp: Developing Retail and E-Commerce Software in the Retail World

F

or many years, retailers have focused on personalizing the experience for their shoppers online by providing seamless checkout processes, mobile E-Commerce and by tracking their every movement online. With all this data, there is a growing need to leverage this data to create smarter experiences and reduce operating costs. For example, some retailers are using their data to automate personalized email campaigns and coupons. One of our clients created a “personalized online shopping assistant” by using their CRM data to suggest products based on their brand preferences and past purchases.

Celerant Technology develops innovative retail and ECommerce software with a mission to help retailers grow their business and manage every aspect of their operations with a single integrated platform. The company retail system combines POS, inventory and order management, warehousing, business intelligence, E-Commerce, marketplace integrations and integrated marketing automation. The organization also partner with each of their clients to ensure their success by providing a seamless implementation, customizations, training, support and services such as digital marketing to increase traffic to their stores and website. With 18 years’ experience, they bring their expertise, innovation and best practices to the retail industry, and have been recognized this year as the #1 retail software on the RIS LeaderBoard.

Innovative Leaders of Celerant Technology In the 1990s, they began to see a shift from the old style cash registers to computer-based systems. By the end of the 90s, retailers began demanding more, however, there was a lack of high-end technology especially for small-to-mid size retailers. Ian Goldman, CEO/President, along with his brother, Robert Goldman, CTO, and John Heiser, CFO, founded Celerant Technology to improve the retail

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industry with innovative technology. Their initial goal was to develop a single, real-time, database system for tier 2 and 3 retailers.

Impressive Services by Celerant Technology Celerant’s retail software enables omnichannel merchants to manage and expand their entire business, in-store and online, within one system in real-time. Celerant goes far beyond your typical retail software company- designing custom E-Commerce sites built on a single database with Celerant’s POS software, providing seamless integrations to multiple online marketplaces and offering full-service digital marketing with SEO and email automation, integrated with CRM and sales data.

Celerant Technology provides retailers with the tools needed to streamline supply from their vendors. Through these tools, retailers can browse vendor catalogs, import the products they want to sell, and automatically reorder inventory based on min/max levels. With live vendor feeds, retailers can sell wider product lines on their website without stocking inventory or fulfilling the orders by displaying their vendor’s available inventory on their website. When customers make purchases, the orders are sent directly to the distributor for fulfillment via drop shipping.

Through their integrations with 3rd-party marketplaces such as Amazon, Walmart and eBay – they allow retailers to easily expand sales via new outlets on the web. Retailers can easily upload and sell their products directly on 3rdparty marketplaces, and track those sales - all in a single place. They can choose to fulfill their own orders or have the marketplace fulfill the orders.

Celerant provides a fully-integrated email automation platform, which their clients use to promote their

| January 2018 |

Ian Goldman CEO & President

‘‘

‘‘

Our in-house team of developers is capable of

customizing the system in order to fit any specific operation

businesses. Using in-store and online CRM/sales data, retailers can automate and personalize email campaigns based on their shopper’s buying patterns, interests and brand preferences.

Personalized email marketing can drive more traffic to their retail store and website by delivering up to 6x higher open rates.

When Risk Becomes the Opportunity to Prove As a leader in the retail software industry, they are continuously innovating and introducing new technology to the market. The most significant challenge they face with new advancements is slow user adoption. For example, they were one of the first to integrate the latest in Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) with their POS around 10 years ago.

However, the industry, including their client-base, was not ready to adopt this

| January 2018 |

technology. With their newest innovation, an email marketing platform integrated with clients’ live sales and CRM data in order to send the right message at the right time, while they are seeing a higher adoption, it has been at a slower pace than they anticipated.

Future Footsteps of Celerant Technology In short, you can expect more and more innovative features. Retail platforms are defined by the features and functions that users require. The more Celerant is able to offer, the more efficiently users can operate, enabling Celerant to make a greater impact on the retail industry.

In 2018, look for more Stratus Retail integrations with third-party online marketplaces, as well as expanded digital marketing services to help retailers promote both their in-store

and online sales. Celerant is preparing to unveil their new dashboard reporting on the Stratus Retail main menu screen so that retailers can see, at a glance, their most important reports and have more visibility in their top products and brands. They are enhancing their repair and rental modules, as well as buy/trade and consignment. They continue to partner with new vendorsdistributors and manufacturerscreating integrations to help their clients’ better leverage the resources made available to them, such as catalog imports and drop shipping.

This year Celerant announced the release of their new SaaS, Cloud system- Cumulus Retail- through their subsidiary, CAM Commerce, for the tier 3 retailers. In 2018, the company is looking forward to providing tier 3 retailers with tier 1 technology and 35 years retail experience, all with tier 3 pricing and simplicity.

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Industry Trends

Key POS

Trends

Reshaping

the Retail

I

n recent times, the retail industry hasn’t seen a more exciting invention since the invention of cash register.

With new and innovative technologies helping shape both online and offline experiences for consumers, the landscape is continuously changing in a way which was unimaginable even few years back. The best part is that there seems to be no end of the innovation, which only influencing the purchase decision of the consumers.

Nowadays the main focus of retailers is to create a safe, engaging, and unique shopping experience for its consumers, it’s very important for the retailers to understand the importance of Big Data and in-store analytics and adapting to the cloud. With the retail industry at the verge of massive transformation, we are listing out few key trends that everyone needs to know to be successful in the ecosystem that is transforming quickly.

Multi-system Integration Multi-system integration with various applications gets the utmost priority from top retailers. Most of the retailers list out POS integration with other applications as a key priority alongside the implementation of dynamic marketing content through mobile devices. This is mostly due to the retailer’s interest to store all the customer information and purchase history in a database, which is completely centralized that could be easily integrated with multiple applications.

However, in order to do that, a retailer needs to use an ERP database that can handle all these.

Speed People always look for quick solutions for everything. A clock starts ticking the moment a customer enters, no matter how good the product is, if the process is slow and the attention to details are missing, then customers will leave

30

Sector

disappointed. As a retailer, one cannot please everyone, but with a modern and efficient POS, the service can be improved. A modern POS simplifies the communication between various departments and can save a lot of time for both the retailer and the customer respectively.

Managing Stocks Keeping and managing inventory is a nightmare for most of the retailers, and it’s quite natural. Managing inventory is a never-ending task and takes a lot of effort, time, and manpower. However, it is quite important to manage inventories when it comes to long-time survival. An efficient POS system always makes the process of managing the inventory much easier. The best part of a POS is, one can monitor the status of stocked items, shipped products, and new orders anytime. This is a huge time saver for a cumbersome and a tedious process, and eventually helps retailers to focus on other important aspects of running the business.

Customized Experience With POS systems, retailers just need to provide personalization that scoops out every shopper. Every passing year, retailers are adapting to personalized technology solutions that allow an interactive user experience. Thanks to the emergence of all new mobile POS technology, now retailers can offer its customers more choices to accommodate their shopping habits by letting them to complete transactions anywhere in the store. Now with the invention of improved POS marketers and customer service teams can contact the buyer at each point of their purchase decision. With so much data retailers and consumers can have better customer service, quicker payment processes and access to better offers and real-time personalization. | January 2018 |

Promotions and Marketing at its Best Nowadays with the advent of digital technology, marketing involves maintaining a digital presence as well. A POS can integrate all the advertised offers with transactions, making it easier to keep track of all the campaigns. Additionally, it can integrate with CRM and track customer behavior. When an offer gets popular among the masses, then the retailer will see it in his transaction data.

Usage of Big Data analytics In order to compete with e-commerce, retailers are now taking the help of Big-Data and in store analytics just to have a better idea about what’s happening inside the store.

Big-Data analytics helps retailers to track how frequently a specific item moves from shelf to shopping cart allows retailers to know the trends that are dominant in the market.

Analytics helps the retail industry in a big way to better understand consumer purchase pattern and behaviors.

Keeping Track of Employees To run a business smoothly a retailer, need few people. A POS system enables to manage them with great accuracy.

With a Point of Sale system in place, employees can sign on or off easily and the system will automatically log their work hours and break hours.

Security Above all, a POS system offers great security protections that help keeping customer data safe. Retail stores and businesses are always prime targets for Cyber Criminals, and a data breach is not good for a business. So, by using standard encryption and firewall, businesses can be secured from cyber-attacks and customers can swipe their cards with a peace of mind.

So, here we have listed out few of the POS trends that will shape the future of the retail industry. As we look ahead, these trends will be on focus for both retailers and customers. The main advantage of an advanced POS system is greater efficiency and optimization, it links all the departments together which eventually allows to have better control over the inventory, better profitability, and to manage processes in an efficient way.

| January 2018 |

31

The 10 Most Recommended

Retail

KPS AG:

Enriching Business Operations with Priceless Experience and Insights

A

n hourglass is a fascinating object for thinkers and dreamers alike. When sand drops from an hourglass to measure time, it fills an empty void into a flask to capture infinite possibilities that each moment in life brings. During each moment lived and breathed—infinite ideas, infinite efforts, infinite recollections and infinite intuitions fill all of us to turn time on its head. A watch chases time like a tool; an hourglass fills the empty void in life with an experience full of passion.

Individuals and organizations also spend millions of dollars, hours of calculated and focused efforts, invest in advanced resources to capture maximum efficiency. One company which believes in capturing the true worth of time spent with the help of pure objectivity and passionate efforts for true innovation enriched with practical experience is KPS AG. Reshaping the Present to Build a Brighter Future KPS AG is one of Europe’s leading consulting partner for the digital transformation. KPS works with a wide variety of companies who wish to become customer centric corporate leaders in a short period of time. Its expertise lies in the digital transformation of companies situated in the retail, fashion, and consumer markets.

KPS provides its clients with end-to-end services from strategic guidelines for realignment and sector-specific innovative, integrated process chains to the implementation of cutting-edge technologies – all through a single source. In the recent past, KPS has delivered its clients with a 50% reduction in project runtime and cost allowing them to introduce innovative, digital business models faster while staying agile. Based on the KPS methodology and the extensive knowledge

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of KPS consultants about each individual sector, the success of every project is guaranteed.

An Advice That Makes Market Leaders Sit Up and Take Notice KPS has become a market leader very quickly as it is trusted by some of the most prestigious names in Europe to deliver implementation-oriented strategy, process, and IT consulting. KPS has simplified its approach and focused on three central pillars to deliver results to these clients: the in-depth industry and process experience of KPS consultants, the proprietary KPS Rapid Transformation approach and separating itself from the competition with an outstanding client base. Its prominent client base includes Hugo Boss, Lidl, Dansk Supermarked, Deichmann, PUMA and many more. The firm continues to taste success at every step by leading digital transformation and process alignment across Europe.

A Unique Solution Challenging Clients to Innovate every day When KPS was founded in 2000, rapid transformation solutions were largely unheard of. KPS today reshapes the entire business and process spectrum, from ERP ecommerce, through to digital marketing and sales and the successful management of big data. Additionally, it transforms the process on all levels - the strategic, process, application and technology level. Such an allencompassing methodological approach was not only unheard of but was often unimaginable to clients. Hence, KPS faced a challenging situation of bringing various technology and process experts on a common platform to make them understand the bigger picture and work in

| January 2018 |

Leonardo Musso CEO

tandem with each other to deliver optimum results. Today, the company has moved on to solving some of the core digital transformation challenges of the different industries.

Today, traditional bricks and mortar retailers experience many difficulties in connecting with the increasingly new digital customers. KPS helps retailers understand to initiate a refreshing dialogue with their customer base with the help of innovative technology solutions. The company has successfully brought many retailers closer to their consumers in a real-time Omnichannel business environment with the help of enriching business insights.

Translating Experience to Build a Futuristic Vision A consultant requires more experience and more in-depth

| January 2018 |

‘‘

‘‘

We ensure competent, experienced, and rapid project turnaround understanding of a business in order to guide clients. There are three main things that a consultant must understand about a business. These include: the industry, its processes, and the technology that drives its potential. This requires years of training and relevant industry experience; a fact of life at KPS. The firm has invested in its people, technology and solutions to not only gain the highest relevant experience but to translate that experience in building prototype solutions that meet the needs of their clients.

Today, the team of consultants at KPS prides themselves in their authority on every sector.

company has consistently developed, optimized and constantly upgraded its process characteristics and function catalogues to stay on top of its competitors and the latest technological developments. KPS is part of a very successful partner network, including SAP Gold, SAP Hybris Platinum, Adobe Business, Intershop Premium, SAP ARIBA as well as SAP Concur Partner. With around 1,000 consultants across 12 countries, KPS with its unique approach, network and dedicated employees will continue to expand its global market position through ground-breaking projects in digital and technological innovation and change.

Consistently Waving the Magic Wand of Success Led by Leonardo Musso, the CEO of the company, KPS delivers top notch transformation projects to its clients since its formation. The

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Retail Insights

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE through an Agile Retail Technology Platform Troy Muise CEO & Co-Founder Salesboom.com

I

t’s simple. We all know that Customer Experience is improved by managing the relationship through the entire customer lifecycle, while ensuring we keep employees and customers on the same page at all times.

To improve this Customer Experience you must get good at closed-loop marketing. This stem of marketing continually measures the good and bad about each campaign, as well as tracks the relationship with the customer from Marketing, Sales, Support and eCommerce. This stem is agile enough to change course as needed, update processes, and retrain employees and customers seamlessly.

The center of Agile Retail Technology has now become the CRM system (Customer Relationship Management).

Improving the customer experience is part of the CRM system, as it contains the master profile record of the Customer during all stages of the buying relationship. Not

34

just the purchasing stage, but lead management and nurturing, sales opportunity management, and post-sale stages are easily accessed. This will develop a rich customer profile that can be used to segment existing Contacts and Accounts, as well drive Account-Based Marketing (ABM) and Account-Based Sales activities.

Retailers today must be ready to communicate with customers online, at any time, and self-service through their communication channel of choice - Website, Chat, Email, Phone, Online form submission, Text, Social, and onward.

CRM systems manage the communications and relationships and keep interactions from all channels in one place, attached to the Customer profile.

Forward-thinking Retailers are improving their customer experience by making their organizations more agile, and able to react instantaneously to change. This is achieved by | January 2018 |

evolving into a digital organization. Digital transformation is achieved by adopting a Cloud-first strategy to outsource the heavy lifting, and innovation of the software to the Cloud CRM vendor, leaving you to focus on the customer experience and perfecting that.

Retail Technology platforms integrated with the CRM core include Point of Sale (POS) joined with a Cloud CRM system (Customer Relationship Management) and also a cohesive backend ERP system (Enterprise Resource Planning) so that you can see all the interactions with customers during the entire Customer Lifecycle. Various other apps may be integrated with this ecosystem as well including email, phone, text, and others.

Reports on customers from pre-sales, through Sales and closing, eCommerce, and onward through support, re-ups, cross-sells, upsells, renewals, return engagements by the customer help bring insight into what is working and what is faltering. This allows one to quickly react and change course, and retrain all internal and external customers, from leads to customers, employees and shareholders, as well as partners and other stakeholders.

Being Agile in retail can be the difference between survival and failure for many retail organizations.

A Cloud-First Strategy is the way to success and the key to being agile in this evolving marketplace.

The future of retail is to be more agile and responsive with their existing customer processes, to reduce friction in buying and to keep all stakeholders “on the same page” in terms of what the Marketing, Sales, Support, and Commerce departments are thinking.

Being “on the same page” is the landing page where the lead or customer, as well as the employee or partner can go to read about the process for communicating with the company. Here they can fill out the online form, get an immediate response, letting them know their request has been submitted and an employee notified. In real time, an employee is alerted of the request which is then documented into the CRM as an item for follow-up.

programs performing and customers returning for more from your business.

Retail organizations are all watching what the 600 pound gorilla in the room, Amazon.com, is doing while also trying to maximize revenues from each of the retail locations.

Amazon is releasing an automated store named AmazonGo, requiring no checkout employees, where RFID tags are placed on each product. Buyers enter the store, pull products on and off the shelf, and check out automatically by passing through and electronic gate, much like a metal detector scanner.

The customer’s card is billed automatically and if there is not enough funds, an alarm goes off. No employees needed, other than one employee at the front watching and answering questions, restocking shelves, etc. No need for a checkout. This may seem like a final assault by Amazon on retailers, but in reality Amazon’s only retail competitor is Walmart. One could easily see Amazon leasing their technologies to bring “brick and mortar” Retail new life by not only reducing expenses by reducing staff, but also by tagging your inventory with Amazon tags. This means you instantly can sell them in your store and on Amazon’s estore simultaneously, with the same infrastructure and the same software. This is the ‘offer you can’t refuse’ that Amazon may be putting forth to all retailers, in a bid to take over all physical locations, while already dominating the online retail space, and letting Walmart try and deal with this.

One interesting and brand new way of monetizing space is by combining servers that run CRM and back-office software systems, but also come with Bitcoin Miners that mine Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies. The overhead in a business including leasing the space, heating it, electricity, employees, insurance, etc., need to be paid whether you are having a slow night or not, so why not be mining Bitcoin on-site to help pay the bills? The jury is out on whether this is a great solution for all retail organizations, and there are many risks to educate yourself on about Cryptocurrencies, however the idea of mining currency as an alternate income strategy to boost location performance is another tool in the arsenal to keep in mind.

Big Data is a new and huge trend among retailers in hopes of analyzing all the various purchases and social interactions. This helps map out new opportunities and keep profiles enriched with the most intelligent and up-to-date information on your customer. This leads to keeping loyalty | January 2018 |

35

The 10 Most Recommended

Retail

Interactive Edge: Transforming Technology for Faster and Deeper Insights

A

n industry leader in data analysis and presentation software, Interactive Edge has been serving the consumer goods industry to enhance productivity and efficiency for over 20 years. Interactive Edge provides shopper and category management data analysts, marketing and field sales teams with the award- winning XP3® software solution that helps them deliver customized category and shopper insight data in presentation format to retail buyers. Its XP3® platform helps to integrate multiple data sources directly into Microsoft PowerPoint® and Excel® to speed up the process of creating dynamic, data rich presentations and dashboards. On average, it reduces the time spent by over 80%.

Customer Management, Visionary Innovation, and Demand Data Analytics are some of the areas where Interactive Edge has been winning several industry awards.

As Interactive Edge ultimately wanted to put all of the power in the client’s hands, a new solution was developed that would meet the need for additional flexibility. XP3® Suite was developed to meet the needs of both field account sales who required a simple user interface as well as analysts who needed it to be powerful enough to easily import and flexibly explore data to simplify the process of building and maintaining business intelligence analytical presentations and reports. The XP3® Suite software can be implemented as either a desktop or enterprise solution.

Ground Breaking Services of Interactive Edge The Interactive Edge support team works very closely with the client organization to understand the needs of those who are “power” users and the sales organization so that the software is implemented to deliver the business benefits they were looking to achieve by using Xp3®.

Initial Challenges leading to Triumph Interactive Edge was one of the very first companies to create customizable Category Management software called CMS-Pro®. They have successfully completed implementations for many of the largest CPG companies including Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Hormel, Pepsi-Cola and many more. CMS-Pro® was designed to require very little effort on the part of the casual end-user who only needed to make limited selections such as retailer, time period or product/category to refresh and update an entire presentation or report. While this was proven to be very effective, in order to meet the requirements of each retailer, additional analytical slides needed to be added which fell upon Interactive Edge’s support team to complete this task.

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The flexible, scalable design of XP3® allows clients to deploy as much or as little functionality as their business environment requires. XP3’s front–end analysis and automated presentation development tools can be layered over existing data management solutions to enhance and extend their value, or XP3’s full functionality can be leveraged by implementing its back-end data loading and integrated data warehouse functionality to meet robust information management requirements.

Future Roadmap of Interactive Edge Interactive Edge is currently working on the next version of

| January 2018 |

Zel Bianco Co-founder, President, & CEO

‘‘

‘‘

Generating actionable insights and recommendations, and presenting them on a recurring basis, gives you greater credibility and positions you as a trusted advisor to your retail customers

their software: a cloud based solution that incorporates the easy to use interface and rich features their clients have come to expect from Interactive Edge. Interactive Edge is also expanding their professional services team to provide more services to more organizations as many CPG organizations are facing significant staff reductions. E-commerce will also be another area of focus as online purchasing continues to impact brick and mortar retailers.

Strategic Leader Accelerating Success Zel Bianco is the Co-founder, President and CEO of Interactive Edge. As an industry leader for over 25 years, he has been a member of the Category Management Association

| January 2018 |

since its inception and has contributed his and the Interactive Edge’s team’s expertise in the association’s groundbreaking changes such as the updating of the category management process to Category Management 2.0, as well as support for many industry white papers including Category Management Mastery- the Key to Growth and many others.

Zel is the member of the DePaul University Sales Leadership and Category Management Advisory Board and a frequent speaker at the Category Management Association Annual Conference and other industry events.

He is also a member of Retail Wire’s Brain Trust and a regular contributor to the Retail Wire daily on-line newsletter and blog. Zel and Interactive Edge also won the prestigious Demo Jam Award

at the SAP TechEd SAPPHIRE User Conference against hundreds of contestants.

Zel’s main focus is on driving value for Interactive Edge’s clients and their retail customers by helping clients to build better connections between raw data sources and the category management and shopper insights professionals who need to generate insights and actionable recommendations to their retail buyers.

He also contributes his time and resources to help students at a number of universities seek a career in CPG or related industries.

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DigiPerspective

Retail

in the

Digital Age:

Focusing on the Three Things

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ustomer buying patterns, as well as evolving consumer behavior, lays the groundwork as to why the real-time monitoring of operations, promotions, and financial performance are mission critical to today’s modern retailer. These businesses, with numerous locations and large workforces, are challenged with the problem of ensuring that employees from the top to the bottom of their organization are aligned around the same goals and objectives. This alignment is especially important considering the need to address ever-changing objectives driven by customer, corporate, seasonal, and promotional mandates that impact their bottom line.

While there are endless initiatives that retailers can focus their energy on, we have found that adhering to “The Three Things” is the most informed method to channeling their transactional data. By focusing on optimizing sales, promotion performance and improving profits; a retailer can turn their available data into tangible action plans.

Sales Optimization: Streamline your revenue-generating activities Every time a customer visits your store and interacts with a sales associate, your organization has the opportunity to not only make a sale but also increase the average order size.

For example, a specialty apparel retailer can upsell belts with slacks, jewelry with a blouse, socks with shoes, etc.

This is common knowledge but what isn’t always known is what upsell items are the most lucrative at a regional or district level. What we have found is that many retailers understand the right product mix to bundle but store

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management isn’t always convinced as to what should be the A, B or C option for the team on the floor to focus on.

This can be solved by focusing what is already embedded in their enterprise-wide TLog data.

Driving more value from Omni-Channel There are many times when an omni-channel sale could lead to an in-store upsell but this is rarely tracked…until now. For example, a customer buys a product online and then returns it to their local store. By focusing on historical omni-channel data, some retailers have found that a saleseroding activity of a return can actually drive an additional sale if associates are trained properly. Because many online products are not part of a store’s inventory and are typically shipped back to distribution or sold as a one-off item, they can be viewed as a quick loss but in reality if you can isolate which items are being returned across your entire enterprise, you can have a complimentary offering made readily available to your sales associates as an upsell item.

Now the loss of a return can strategically offset with the right training and offer.

Stopping Rewards Program Abuse Some retailers may be surprised to know that some of their customers know their promotion activity better than their own marketing department does. For example, one retailer put a Rewards Points Program in place to reward loyal customers, and the retailer’s marketing department believed the program was very successful. However, the operational team analyzed components of the program in depth and made some startling discoveries.

| January 2018 |

About the Author A veteran in the technology space, Russ Hawkins, the President and CEO of Agilence, has shouldered the responsibility of the company and spearheaded its overall strategy to lead it towards success. Formerly, Russ was the President and CEO of two early stage tech companies, SilverStorm Technologies and Paragon Networks. The Boston graduate also boasts 15 years of experience at Lucent Technologies, wherein he helmed various management positions.

Russ Hawkins President & CEO Agilence

When first rolled out, the Rewards Program had no limits on the points a customer could collect and noticed that some customers had racked up several hundred thousand points a year (versus the average customer who would get 2500 points a year). Using a data analytics system to analyze their transactional data, the retailer discovered that these high-reward “customers” were reselling the retailer’s merchandise on eBay and ordering the merchandise the eBay customers ordered on Mr. Rebates. This meant that the high-rewards customer (e.g., reseller) was getting cash back from Mr. Rebates, and as a rewards member, was eligible for free shipping as well, although the reseller still charged the eBay customer for shipping. The reseller carried no inventory and did not handle returns, making the reseller a fulfilment center.

| January 2018 |

Even though the retailer was recognizing revenues on this type of activity, the retailer’s margins were significantly impacted, and the resellers were wiping out the retailer’s inventory. Worst yet, the retailer’s true customers, who were expecting a good shopping experience, were denied that because the resellers were buying up the inventory.

Once the retailer identified this type of rewards program abuse, the organization decided to put a cap on the number of annual points a Rewards customer could earn to put a stop to this activity.

However, without data analysis, this retailer would have continued to believe that the program was successful when in fact it was eroding their margins and depleting their inventory.

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The 10 Most Recommended

Retail Shamrock Consulting Group: Offering Reliable Solutions for Telecom, Data Center, Cloud and Fiber Verticals at the Guaranteed Best Price

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he consulting agent industry has changed considerably, and so has the provider industry -there are enormous, exciting changes happening right now. Agents don’t survive long if they don’t know how to advise on new technologies like SD-WAN and cloud technologies and strategy. The industry has changed from a legacy telecommunications industry (think legacy AT&T, Verizon, etc.) with many players and competitors, to a merging industry with fewer large players vying for the same business around the country. If we look back a few years, there are many companies that just don’t exist anymore – and not just because of big mergers that gobbled up giants like Level 3 and XO. Consolidation means fewer yet larger providers, and what they eventually become, aside from selling internet and phone service, is essentially a logo and contract vehicle for emerging technologies. All big telecom providers like AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink are selling SD-WAN, cloud services and consolidated broadband -- but they’re typically not the actual creations of those companies. So, what does the customer actually purchase? Sure, they may be buying Velocloud from AT&T, but what they’re really buying is the team behind the product and the comfort of a brand.

Shamrock Consulting Group provides expert solutions for telecom, datacom, colocation, fiber and public and private cloud. Shamrock does everything from writing and running complex RFP’s for larger opportunities, to simple shopping for smaller clients.

They analyze billing to come up with an accurate ROI for a project, get the best pricing and contract language possible, makes sure everything is installed in a timely manner, and manage the deal until the client is 100% satisfied. They

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have over 150 carriers in their growing portfolio, which ensures that their clients always get the best available services and options for the best available price. The organization does everything from researching fiber maps, to digging into the finances of each deal, to working in the best legal language possible. They work from beginning to end on solutions for a variety of different technologies, and their goal is to establish a long-term partnership with their clients based on trust while cutting their time and effort by an average of 80%.

Fascinating Journey of Shamrock Consulting Group The journey for Shamrock has been one of a single owner, to the first sales and support people, to a formal company, and it’s been a fun and rewarding journey. President and CEO Paul Cooney, along with his business partner and VP Ben Ferguson, developed their initial push to focus on customer acquisition and revenue, which Shamrock has always done very well. They had very little support and staff, no processes, and if you sold a deal, you had to do everything.

The initial struggle was just about getting revenue at the door. It was pretty simple – they were not manufacturing products or anything like that – they had to sell services and keep customers happy. The biggest turning point was after about a year and a half when Shamrock started hiring support people for non-sales-related roles. Paul is a big fan of hiring people to do specific jobs, so each team member can focus on their core role. As they grow, what Paul sees is simply more specialization of work. Every hire changes the dynamic of the company, and luckily for them, everyone who has come on board has provided an immensely positive impact on the team as a whole.

| January 2018 |

Paul Cooney Founder & CEO

processes, Shamrock expects continued growth and success in 2018 and beyond.

Paul Cooney, The Man behind Shamrock Consulting Group Paul grew up in the small town of Pleasantville, NY and graduated from the University of Richmond. After moving to Boston, he found early success selling fixed wireless for Teligent, Inc. (a dot-com casualty) in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. Seeking stability during the tumultuous burst of the dot-coms and ubiquitous telecom bankruptcies, he headed out West to Hermosa Beach, CA and worked for AT&T as an enterprise sales representative. Paul worked his way up to the top rep in the country before taking over the struggling Los Angeles sales team. According to Paul, the turnaround for the LA sales team was lengthy yet rewarding. “It took me 6 months to turn the team around,” Paul says, “But we eventually went from the worst team in the country to consistently one of the best.”

| January 2018 |

Shamrock Sees Industry Challenges as Opportunities to Excel The biggest challenges are, in Paul’s opinion, typically a good thing for Shamrock. It’s a challenge for customers to keep up with everchanging technology trends, but fortunately that’s something Shamrock does well. They have a fluid business model and can constantly bring on new partnerships to meet the needs of the changing technology trends. A few years ago, nobody was selling cloud services, and now they’re not only selling cloud, but are also providing cloud management applications to help with cost analytics and projections.

Company mergers are a constant, new competitors will always pop up, and technologies will always evolve. That’s the way their industry moves, and Paul believes that competition and challenges across an industry helps to separate the top agents from the rest.

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Through new product solutions and more formalized

The Future is Bright for Shamrock Continued growth, new product solutions and more formalized processes are all in the near future for Shamrock. They are hiring more superstars, which is always a mix of stress and excitement – the company really wants everyone to fit into the “family.” They are opening up two new offices soon, and that will bring its own set of natural challenges, but in a good way – they know that they need to expand, and they’re excited about the opportunity to take over new markets.

In the past few years they have been implementing formal processes and systems, which have helped them to keep track of everything, from orders to contracts to commissions. The future for Shamrock is expansion by way of doing more of the same, with more people, in more places.

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