NRF Big Show 2014 serves up a wealth of recommendation for retail tech leaders trying to embrace digital commerce, adopt a mobile-first strategy, and reap the benefits of big data.
Big challenges for retail tech decision makers
Pity the poor retail CIO. There’s pressure to support new mobile strategies while also thwarting showrooming. They’re asked to personalize the client experience, but beware of those privacy pitfalls. They need to get agile, perhaps by getting into the cloud, but then the most recent data-breach headline puts their security strategy under a microscope.
The National Retail Federation’s Big Show, Jan. 12-15, in Long island, puts a focus at the often contradictory technology priorities and trends facing the fashionable retailer. The most important push remains the hunt for what Allan Smith, CIO of clothing maker and retailer Lululemon, calls the “single customer experience.” That is the most recent name for the ten-plus-year-old quest to bring order and consistency to a retail experience that spans physical stores, web stores, call centers, email campaigns, social sites, and mobile applications.
CIOs know well that technology is a huge element of the silo problem, as point-of-sale (POS) systems, e-commerce platforms, and order-management applications have served up their unsynchronized, disparate versions of the reality. Integration and complex strategies around cross-channel fulfillment, replenishment, and allocation have helped matters, but technology providers similar to SAP’s Hybris e-commerce unit were handy on the Big Show with the newest promise of a single platform which could manage all retail transactions.
It’s hard maintaining with the pace of change, and consumer expectations for mobile and social shopping experiences are only the most recent examples of the necessity for agility. Obviously, technology vendors starting from IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAS to eBay, Google, NetSuite, and Verizon were readily available promising rapidly deployable, cloud-based computing capacity and alertness services. But CIOs like Michael Kingston of Neiman Marcus know all too well that internal process changes and organizational structures are the largest obstacles to being a responsive retailer.
With mobile, social, and web channels now fueling the expansion of huge data, there’s clearly an imperative to use all available information. Kingston of Neiman Marcus (and his counterpart Beth Jacob of Target) also knows all too well that data is a risk, as underscored by the new Neiman Marcus and Target data breaches. But there weren’t too many answers for data breaches discussed, and plenty of the “security” technologies on display were excited about protecting retailers from theft.
Retailers will take a hybrid method of the cloud, predicts IBM chairman, president, and CEO Ginni Rometty, with “private” being a key option for sensitive data. a major Show keynote speaker, Rometty also expects some retailers to follow the lead of banks in appointing chief data officers. As for that other C-suite competitor, the CMO, get used to working shoulder-to-shoulder with her or him, because the challenges ahead for shops will demand a team strategy to meeting customer expectations.
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