8 retail technology predictions for 2017

8 retail technology predictions for 2017

By Sharon Goldman as written on www.cio.com
Consumer confidence reached new heights in 2016, technology contributed mightily to the retail and ecommerce success. Here are the top tech predictions for retail in the coming year.

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Shoppers opened their pocketbooks wide over the holidays in 2016, pushing retail growth estimates (the Wall Street Journal reported the fastest growth rate since 2005) and consumer confidence to new heights — with ecommerce a particular bright spot with over $110 billion in sales, according to Forrester Research. Technology contributed mightily to that retail success, at every stage and angle of the shopping journey, both in brick-and-mortar stores and online — from browsing, point-of-sale and shipping to checkout, supply chain, payments and much more. That won’t change in 2017, as top retailers have already long-planned their technology priorities for the coming year. Here, experts weigh in on some of their top technology predictions:
1. Alternative checkout methods will continue to grow.
With a smartphone in every pocket and the expansion of advanced barcodes and imaging technologies for scanning products, faster alternative checkout methods will continue to grow across the retail sector, says Tony Rodriguez, CTO of digital identification solutions provider Digimarc. “Sam’s Club already offers in-aisle checkout, while Amazon gained attention for its vision of grocery shopping sans checkout lines, so anticipate that other grocers and retailers will seek shortcuts for shoppers that they hope will breed brand loyalty,” he says. “We expect retailers and brands to lead the way with enhanced product packaging and other options for easy checkout.”
2. The store associate will become a high-tech hub.
The No. 1 investment in retail will be the store associate and how to turn them into a beacon of knowledge and relationship builder, says Bill Zujewski, executive vice president of marketing at mobile platform Tulip Retail. Retailers have begun investing in mobile solutions that give access to the entire product inventory and product details, but that’s no longer enough — instead, store associates need to be able to anticipate and surpass customer expectations.
“When a customer comes into the store, sales associates will be notified and ready with product offerings based on valuable data they have at their fingertips including the customer's recent purchases, loyalty rewards level, online browsing history, activity log and shopping preferences,” he says.
3. Chatbots will become a priority retail channel.
[This year] will be a foundational one when it comes to applying AI-powered chatbots that are improved with new data streams and integration across channels, says Dave O’Flanagan, CEO and co-founder of cloud platform Boxever. “Chatbots are only as valuable as the relationships they build and the scenarios they can support, so their level of sophistication will make or break them,” he says. A recent survey found consumers aren’t yet as excited about responsive chatbots as brands think — so retailers will need to focus their attention on improving their messaging applications to establish more meaningful connections between their brand and customer, he adds.
4. The internet of things (IoT) will boost supply chain efficiency.
IoT is helping retailers connect physical and digital worlds and to facilitate real-time interaction with consumers both inside and outside the store, says Andrew Hopkins, IoT lead for retail at Accenture Mobility, part of Accenture Digital. “Connected devices and products will enable retailers to optimize operations in the face of a more complex supply chain, increasingly important digital channels, and evolving customer demands,” he explains.
Some examples: Managers could use smart tags to adjust pricing in real-time; IoT-enabled sensors would allow store managers to monitor and adjust lighting and temperature settings; businesses could use sensors to automate manual functions such as tracking inventory or changing prices. “This would give sales associates more time to spend interacting with customers, further improving the in-store experience,” he says.
5. Social media will continue to become more shoppable.
Retailers have learned to love consumer-generated content, with photo sharing and hashtags turning into word-of-mouth marketing that works. Now, we’ll begin to see more retailers investing in technology that makes those content experiences more shoppable, says Jim Rudden, CMO of Spredfast. “Instead of having to leave the page or site to search and buy the products they see in photos, consumers will be able to easily click on the content, and purchase the products within, during that moment of discovery,” he says. “Those consumer-generated pieces will take on a whole new life.”
6. Digital convergence will be a big buzzword.
The ecommerce of 2017 and beyond will be all about starting to focus on the convergence of a variety of digital technologies — using voice interfaces, the power of AI and realistic, personalized avatars that support the shopping experience, says Shirley Romig, global retail strategy lead of digital marketing consultancy SapientNitro. “Imagine talking to your personal shopper on the phone and instantly seeing an assortment of dresses you are looking for to wear to your daughter’s graduation,” she says.
“You digitally ‘try on’ the dress using your exact, 3-D image for fit, tell your shopper to size up and check out via voice command.” Ecommerce will evolve to include AI-powered online, personal shoppers that are trained to know preferences, like a favorite store sales associate: “Instead of onerously sorting through pages of product, soon you’ll be able to talk to your AI via your mobile phone and ‘she’ does all the leg work.”
7. 2017 will be the year of the retail API.
APIs have revolutionized industries by bringing consumers apps such as Uber, Google Maps and Pandora — now, retail has started to catch on, says Jett McCandless, CEO of supply chain technology provider project44, though he adds there are still strides to be made in the industry’s widespread understanding and implementation of APIs.
“Retail CIOs will need to understand the impact this technology has on inventory optimization; setting — and meeting — customer delivery expectations; adhering to the demands of today’s always-on consumer and driving real-time visibility across the entire supply chain network,” he says. “Web-service APIs empower retailers to compete in the new on-demand reality by delivering goods in the shortest timeframe possible with the highest level of transparency and operational efficiency.”
8. Mobile payments UX will become more seamless.
Retailers know consumers want a seamless shopping experience — and mobile payments technologies are struggling to bridge the gaps. Look for greater consistency in UX across payment platforms in 2017, as well as increased security measures and the introduction of digital verification solutions, says Cody Winton, CEO and co-founder of personal identity platform Credntia.
“There will be efforts to create a more cohesive payments process, and ease fragmentation across platforms and solutions in the FinTech space,” Winton says. “For example, the introduction of a digitally-scanned license or passport at point of sale will create a seamless user experience by allowing consumers to conveniently switch between the mobile wallet or banking app and a digital credential management app, instead of needing a physical wallet.”

Complexity Will Drive Demand For Managed Services Providers

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Complexity Will Drive Demand For Managed Services Providers

By Mike Kavis as written on www.forbes.com
Technology has changed a lot over the years. Back in the mainframe days we had very standard architectures that were driven by a few vendors and managed by a few people. Developers had few choices when it came to infrastructure and programming languages. When we moved to the client server era, infrastructure configurations became much more dynamic and many enterprises adopted a three tier architecture. Developers could now choose from a variety of programming languages and specialists emerged within each layer of the architecture (web, application, database, middleware, etc.). This increase in complexity came with trade-offs. We now had greater flexibility in the types of applications we could build and the ability to deliver software with more velocity and at a lower cost. However, managing these n-tier architectures created more operational overhead and required a diverse set of skills to support the various layers.
As we enter the cloud era, complexity is at an all-time high and our trade-offs are more extreme than ever before. We can build incredible solutions at amazing scale. Both the software and infrastructure components of our architectures can be highly automated. We live in the world where everything can be delivered as a service and is available online, all the time.  In order to support the “always on” and auto scaling requirements that users have come to expect, the underlying architectures have become extremely complex.

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Balancing agility and complexity

At the same time our architectures are increasing in complexity, the business is demanding speed to market like never before. Large ecosystems around cloud computing, mobile computing, big data solutions and the Internet of Things allow us to connect highly abstracted building blocks together and build highly available and extremely robust solutions in a fraction of the time. The architectures of cloud, mobile, and big data are highly distributed and the underlying infrastructure is both virtual and immutable. That is a radical change from when previously large, inflexible, physical architectures supported the software we built.
Today’s distributed architectures are made up of many moving parts. These architectures are elastic, meaning that they scale up and down horizontally by adding and subtracting virtual resources automatically. Building architectures of this nature is much more involved than in the vertical scaling world of mainframes and client server architectures where scaling meant adding bigger physical machines and components. Many engineers within today’s enterprises have years of experience dealing with vertical architectures, but very little experience in building horizontal architectures. Enterprises are traditionally very good at managing back office applications and building n-tier software. But when it comes to architectures that require high scalability and massively parallel processing, very few enterprises have the experience required to build those types of applications.
This creates the following dilemma.  The business sees an opportunity, whether it is a new revenue stream, a competitive advantage, or possibly a competitive threat, and requests that IT implements a new cloud, mobile, or big data solution. IT has very little expertise in this space yet still decides to build it themselves. They go through a long period of prototyping and learning. Many of these enterprises will fail to deliver or will deliver something subpar or very late. While IT is trying to wrap their arms around these new technologies, the business opportunity sits there idle and the opportunity costs start accumulating rapidly over time. To make matters worse, IT is spinning their wheels and consuming valuable time and money just to stand up clouds, mobile platforms, or big data databases before they can even begin to focus on building the applications and services that will provide the greatest value to the business. Much of the work that IT is trying to figure out is already a commodity that a whole host of vendors already provide out of the box as a service, or even as a completely managed service.

Giving up control to acquire value

IT traditionally wants to be in control of everything. Developers frequently want to build many things that are not a core competency. The problem I see in IT is they prioritize things like control and manageability far more than things like speed to market, customer satisfaction, agility, etc. We live in an era where time to market is one of the most critical value propositions in business. Get something to market quick, acquire customers, learn from those customers, and advance the product or service based on customer feedback. Going dark for 12-18 months as IT ramps up its skillset for the new technologies is not a winning formula. IT needs to understand that they should focus on delivering business value instead of trying to control every technology under the sun.

Where does IT add value?

The real value of IT is its deep understanding of the business and enabling business partners by providing them with cost effective technology solutions that can be delivered quickly and adjusted frequently. Building and managing commodity technologies adds time and costs to each project and ties up precious IT resources on tasks that add little to no value to the business. No wonder IT is often considered a cost center! My advice is to take a step back and build a business architecture diagram that lays out the core business services that your company offers. Then draw up a reference architecture that depicts all of the different IT services that are required to support those business services. Then, identify which of those IT services are core to your business and build those. Everything else should be outsourced to managed service providers or to various external services and products.

Summary

IT needs to stop being a control freak and figure out how to add value by quickly delivering on the company’s core services. IT should be focusing on being the best provider of the services that their customers demand. If that service happens to be providing data center services, then by all means focus on that. If not, don’t spend time building datacenters. The same goes for big data, mobile, and IoT. If the company’s core service is to be a provider of database services, mobile platforms, or sensor technology, then build those technologies. If not, find the vendors who deliver those services as a core competency and spend your time building your business services on top of it

 

Looking for a partner in your business' managed services needs? Call us at 800-790-1524 to learn about all that we offer!

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Golf pro breaks down barriers to becoming a golfer with Microsoft Technologies

Golf pro breaks down barriers to becoming a golfer with Microsoft Technologies

By Gregg Rogers as written on blogs.windows.com

Windows 10, Surface and Azure transform golf lessons  

When I was a kid, I developed a huge interest in golf. I was a good athlete who could play all traditional sports well but golf was different. I quickly developed a passion for the game and had a strong work ethic, but like many people, I found golf to be an elusive riddle. Despite non-stop practice, my progress was not as fast as I hoped it to be. I knew that if I wanted to get better, I needed detailed feedback on my game. After a few years of trying to play professionally, I discovered that I spent more time helping others to play better and that my skill was to teach people how to improve their golf game. I earned my PGA of America membership and began to focus on ways to teach more efficiently and with better feedback using technology. Eventually, I opened the Gregg Rogers’ Golf Performance Centers which focuses on the latest golf teaching technologies to give aspiring and advanced golfers more personalized and effective instruction to help them become better golfers.

As an early adopter of technology, I’ve long relied on tech to help me run and grow nearly every aspect of my business. Everyone from our golf instructors to club fitters use Windows 10 Pro powered devices and Office 365 to schedule lessons and develop custom orders, as well as analyze costs and revenue.
As a golf instructor, I use advanced tracking technologies to analyze swings and movement which allows me to pinpoint exactly what needs to be focused on to improve performance. Technology simplifies the learning process and makes improving fun. One of the challenges is many of my students have trouble remembering the lesson when they get to the golf course and may become frustrated. And, tracking their progress is something that is also difficult without the supporting data. As a teacher, I know that feedback and practice is key to improving, and with the right data, video content and a supportive coach, we can make it easier for people to learn golf and have more fun. I turned to Microsoft and the app-development firm Taqtile, a member of the Microsoft Partner Network, to create a Windows 10 Universal Windows Platform (UWP) training app and student portal that takes golf instruction to a level not used before.  We created “The Gregg Rogers Golf Performance” solution in less than four months.  The solution empowers our instructors to not only provide deeper analysis and more personalized recommendations, but also places the data at our students’ fingertips so they can improve and track their progress every time they practice — with or without their instructor.
To use the app, our students hit shots in our controlled, indoor, simulated golf environment at one of my performance centers. The app integrates with these high definition golf simulators that use Doppler radar, ultrasound and high-speed video to record data from the shot such as body mechanics, club-head speed and swing angle. In fact, we capture over 26 pieces of data from each swing. The simulators instantly calculate where the ball will go, analyze the swing, and capture the data and video images. Our instructor and the student then use Windows 10 powered devices including Microsoft Surface Pro and Surface Book devices at the swing bay to provide immediate replay and feedback. Our students often pick up 10 to 15 yards of distance and significantly improve accuracy and consistency within just a few lessons. The impact of the Golf Performance app has been dramatic as our students can now see exactly what their instructor is trying to teach them anywhere they go or practice. This has not only eased potential frustration for golfers, but also improved comprehension, progress and fun!
What I’m really excited about is how our instructors can also annotate and add voiceover recommendations to the recording, and then upload it to our student portal hosted in the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. Through the power of the Microsoft cloud, our students can access all the data and images anytime from any computer or mobile device – during a lesson, on the golf course, at home or even while traveling. Over time the app can provide comparative analyses to show where students are improving and where they need more work, so our instructor can create customized lessons. Overall, we’ve been able to eliminate trial and error and make a bigger impact on our students’ golf game, leading to greater enjoyment whether at the driving range or golf course. Because we are now able to track their improvement, our student retention and referrals have also increased by double digits as they frequently share their progress with friends.

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Ultimately, we’re not a technology company. We’re a golf improvement facility and small business that happens to specialize in helping people achieve their desired potential and have fun. Microsoft provides the technology that we use to help our customers have more fun on the golf course – and take our business to the next level.