Vista Retail

People want a seamless and unrestricted shopping experience with whatever channel they choose to shop in.  With many new devices and channels now available, many retailers have the ability to make everything the offer available to all customers, anywhere and everywhere.

Here are some examples of omni-channel in today’s retail industry.

Click and Collect Service

The strategy that allows customers to buy online and arrange collection from a local store is available across more than 300 stores.

John Lewis first introduced a click and collect service back in 2008 and in April 2012 John Lewis reported 25% of orders made through johnlewis.com were for click and collect.

Giving customers the option of how they receive their goods is a perfect way to improve the customer experience. While the service is nothing new, allowing online customers the option to pick up their purchases in store, when is convenient for them, removes the hassle of having to pay for and wait for a delivery.

Instore Experience Online

M&S adopted this service in 2012 by providing the free ‘at home’ iPad app. The ‘at home’ app focuses on home items from the M&S catalogue and provides a visual, digital journey mimicking that of an ‘in store’ experience.

The app enhances the customer experience by providing customers with an easy way to browse home ware products and share items directly to social sites [Facebook & Twitter] for a second opinion, before making a purchase, which can be made online, through the app or in store.

Online Shopping Instore

The introduction of iPads across (Oasis’) some stores enables the customer to try an item on in store then browse online, pay online and place orders online whilst standing in the store.

If a garment is not available in the store, the customer can order it via the iPad. Staff are armed with iPads on the shop floor who can assist with checking sizes, colours and styles that aren’t currently available in the shop. The iPad is a great example of enhancing the customer experience, as it decreases queue times, increases product availability and improves customer service.

Oasis is one Retailer that is embracing this service.

Instore Digital Kiosk

In store kiosks have always been used in conjunction with loyalty cards, allowing users to print off special offer vouchers.

Today, more than 16.4million people are currently using Boots’ Advantage Loyalty Card, both online and in store. The Extra Offer Kiosks enables card holders to obtain exclusive personalised offers, based on the number of points they have accumulated. The kiosks can also be used to check how many points customers have and update personal details.

Instore eBook Service

Book store Waterstones is allowing customers to buy and download content onto an electronic device using free Wi-Fi available in stores. The strategy enhances the customer experience by providing consumers with the option of purchasing an eBook, whilst physically browsing books in a traditional bricks and mortar store.

The convenience of downloading an eBook from in store allows customers to flick through the book to prior to purchase while also providing easy access to the store’s specialist staff, trained to provide help and guidance on any of Waterstones’ books.

Depending on the type of retail environment, durable tablets may fill multiple roles in a point of sale system. Some stores, including kiosks, pop-up retailers, and market stalls, will use mobile devices almost exclusively. Others may supplement point of sale hardware with portable tablets.

1. Replace pen and paper

Instead of printing a receipt, which requires a customer signature, why not move the whole process to a tablet specifically designed for the retail environment? Handwriting recognition capabilities on mobile devices have improved immensely; by recording a customer signature digitally, time and resources are saved. Most consumers are happy with an electronic receipt, but for those requesting a hard copy the thermal printer can serve as a backup.

2. Improve sales

A recent report found that 30% of respondents planned to provide store associates with tablets to enhance and improve the sales process. Instead of keeping employees tethered to desktop computers, supplying your staff with tablet computers sets them free to serve customers anywhere in the store.

3. Speed up customer checkout

Queues can discourage and frustrate customers. Today’s rushed consumers want to make selected decisions in a store, purchase them, and move on to the next thing. This is where tablets can make a big difference: by adding POS software and credit card readers, the tablet computer is elevated to the status of a portable cash register.

Consumers want to see new technology integrated into their dining experiences, especially if it will speed up the process of getting their meal or paying their bill.

A study carried out by Technomic on consumer-facing technology suggests that just over half of respondents believe it’s important for restaurants to start using these technologies, and that they expect to use technology more often in the coming year to order food.

Restaurants have been a little slow with the uptake of technology, but a few chains are breaking new ground.

1. Fast-food chains are in the forefront of Mobile Ordering. Domino’s Pizza and KFC are implementing mobile ordering apps.

2. Some companies are embracing iPad order kiosks where consumers can place an order then sit down and relax rather than wait in line. This could prevent a number of walk-aways resulting in more orders.

3. Tabletop e-waiter & checkout. Waiters can had a restaurant iPad to diners while they are sat in their seat where they can self-checkout and their card doesn’t leave their sight. Customers are happy with the fast service, and restaurants can serve more diners per night.

4. Restaurants are likely to change their menus over to digital menu (boards). They are so much easier to edit rather than manually changing items and prices.
McDonald’s is projecting gesture-enabled games onto restaurant floors for kids to play while they wait for their meals, in 150 of the chain’s higher-profile locations. Now that’ll keep kids busy — and we all know happy kids mean happy parents who come back to your restaurant.

Tech-savvy diners expect elegant solutions that work. But for restaurants that can get it right, integrating technology that makes customers happy and turns tables faster will be a no-brainer.

Cancer charity, Tenovus, marked its 70^th year anniversary this year.

On 22^nd March they held their Annual Dinner 2013 at City Hall, sponsored by JM Finn and Harris Pye. The night was held to celebrate Tenovus’ achievements over the past 70 years as well as help to raise vital funds to keep their services going for another 7 decades…

The made a promise that it would be a totally fun filled occasion – and that it certainly was!

With amazing auction prizes and entertainment on offer, we had a fantastic evening!

The evening started with talks from Claudia McVie, Tenovus Chief Executive and a beautiful performance by their Sing With Us Choir

A silent auction took place throughout the night with many interesting prizes up for grabs. Ranging from paintings to golf days and even bespoke cufflinks by Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen 

In the run up to the evening, attendees were to vote to ‘Name the Tenovus Mascot’. The winning name was revealed on the night to be…..Delilah.

The evening was then completed with dinner, drinks and dancing.

Thank you Tenovus for letting us be a part of such a wonderful celebration! We hope the evening was a huge success and we wish you the very best for your up and coming events.

See the 70 years of Tenovus in this inspirational video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79hEjF3e6eo

     1. Accept showrooming

It’s time to accept that showrooming is now a fact of life and it won’t be going away anytime soon.

According to a recent consumer survey, 43% of UK shoppers now use smartphones while on the move to compare prices and read product reviews.

The best approach would be to use it to their advantage. Retailers are looking to create in-store digital shopping ‘experiences’.

Some of the gadgetry may be beyond the budgets of many retailers, but tactics like adding wi-fi and using prompts for mobile users don’t have to cost a fortune.

     1.1 Offer unique products

If possible, create or supply products that can only be purchased from your store, thus reducing the impact of showrooming.

This may work for a bigger retailer with the spending power to influence suppliers, but it’s not a tactic that will work for everyone.

     1.2 Point people at your site

If you have an app or mobile site, shout about it. Prompt people to download it in stores, add prompts to product displays, even incentivise people to download and use apps and sites with discounts and other offers.

     1.3 Provide free wi-fi

This could be risky buy let mobile users access the internet with ease in your stores, in conjunction with your own app and mobile site which they are prompted to access in store.

This can help to attract customers to your store, and they will appreciate not having to eat into their data allowances. There’s also an opportunity to gather customer information. They can access your wifi by registering; allowing you to capture data such as their name, age and email address.

     1.4 Use reviews in store

Consumer reviews are extremely powerful, and if they work online, they will also work offline?

According to a JiWire study, 57.3% are using wi-fi to find product reviews.

Retailers should prompt customers to check out the reviews on their own sites, but there are other ways of using reviews offline. They can be offered at point of sale. They offer useful information for consumers and are detailed enough to allow customers to assess different product characteristics.

     1.5 Offer exceptional customer service

As the online channel matures, and growth slows, customer service (and customer experience) will be a key differentiator.

Use the advantages that a multichannel presence provides

While multichannel retailers can’t always match the likes of Amazon for price, there are many other factors that could be used to provide an advantage.

These include:

Reserve and collect. This appeals to customers who like to do their research online but prefer the convenience of in-store collection.

In-store returns. A smart online retailer will offer free and convenient returns, but many don’t, and customers will often prefer to return items to a store where they can exchange them or receive a refund faster than they could via postal returns.

Check availability. Sometimes, people want a product but just don’t want to wait. Offline retailers will always have this advantage over online rivals. Retailers can make the most of this by offering the ability to check stock in local stores.

Just for fun…Here’s how NOT to deal with it!

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57576395-1/store-charges-$5-showrooming-fee-to-looky-loos/

One man is preparing for an outrageous challenge of running 3.5 marathons within just 3 months! And he has never run one marathon. Crazy or what?!

David Mackie is the Store Services Support Manager at the world’s largest health, beauty & lifestyle retailer, AS Watson.

One day, Dave decided he wanted to run a marathon in order to raise money for ‘The Teenage Cancer Trust’.

It all started when he ran a half marathon last year in aid of charity. But this year he wanted to go above and beyond. So he WOWed everyone by signing up to not one, not two but THREE AND A HALF marathons.

Dave’s ambition would be to complete a marathon (26 miles) in less than 4 hours. Dave has been training for quite some time and recently completed a 14.2 miles run with a time of 2 hours 7 minutes. With that in mind, I’d say he is on track to meet his goal.

Dave will be taking part in the following runs:-

Reading Half Marathon – 17th March

Brighton Marathon – 14th April

Great Wales Marathon – 21st April

Edinburgh Marathon – 26th May

If you would like to support David with his crazy challenge, please donate via his Just Giving page: http://www.justgiving.com/Marathon-Mackie

Whether by strategy or stealth; mobile device are arriving in stores more and more. As with most technology, retail and hospitality businesses will quickly become dependent on this new technology and should it become unavailable, trading is likely to suffer.

Mobile technologies are being used to help reinvent the checkout process. Successful retailers can no longer wait to interact with customers until checkout. They need to assist customers in the aisles and have the flexibility to check them out from multiple locations in and around the store.

Some stores have equipped their personnel with mobile devices designed to process checkout, accept payments and email electronic receipts to customers, right there on the shop floor.

Several retailers have introduced scan-as-you-go’ mobile devices on the sales floor, helping shoppers avoid long lines at the checkout and allowing for an improved in-store experience.

A fast food chain has created a mobile app that allows customers to place an order and pay with a credit card while standing in line, or before even arriving at the restaurant. While some restaurants have deployed tablets to view the menu, take orders and also to entertain guests while they wait for their order to be delivered.

Additionally, several retailers and restaurant chains have already equipped their stores with near field communications (NFC) terminals, which allow customers to pay by simply waving their credit card in front of the device.

What will you do if it breaks? 

By the pure nature of mobile devices, they are more prone to damage through knocks and drops than traditional EPoS.

Have you planned what you’re going to do if such an incident were to occur and a device fails?

At Vista, we’ve been maintaining mobile devices for years and we already understand the challenges that they bring to retailers. With options from Swap Out to Full Damage Cover, we’ve got a solution that will suit your organisation.

Just as hardware suppliers seem to have eased off the accelerator in their drive to find the ‘next big technology’, it was no surprise to find a similarly more pragmatic approach among the software community.

Omni-channel is omni-present. This is clearly affecting suppliers of software solutions as much as their hardware counterparts. Both are having to respond to the retailer’s desire to provide a truly seamless and uniform customer experience – but without big new investment.

Two years ago, retailers were excited by what tablets could bring to the customer experience. However, the introduction of mobile generally was delayed as retailers quickly realised that simply linking mobile apps to the internet was not enough, without equivalent effort in the area of fulfilment.

The challenge was not in the shop but behind the shop: how to ensure that back-office systems around product purchasing, accounting and supply could be brought up-to-date and properly aligned with new mobile devices at the point of customer contact.

In other words, a lot of work had to take place on the infrastructure in order to ensure these potentially game-changing mobility initiatives could effectively be deployed in-store. It’s all very well a customer advisor using a fancy tablet in the sale of a £2,000 Prada handbag, but unless the device can ‘see’ in real-time that the item is indeed in the stockroom, there is the potential for customer disappointment – with the inevitable outcome.

The Show offers plenty of evidence that software houses really grasped this and are now providing solutions which allow the retailer to adopt new interactive technologies as part of a truly end-to-end omni-channel experience. That’s good news for all.

Other take-outs from this year’s NRF? With fewer stand-out technologies, more businesses were looking to differentiate themselves on the show floor by using entertainers – jugglers, magicians and even psychics – to attract visitors to their stands. Gimmicky? Of course, but it certainly seemed to be working in creating face-to-face opportunities with potential prospects.

More seriously, the NRF Convention and Expo is like no other. Combining trade show, conference, seminars and presentations, it attracts leading retailers and industry professionals from around the world. And this year looked to be the best attended yet in our experience.

This makes it a great place to make and reinforce valuable contacts. We can also see at first hand all the emerging retail technologies we are likely to be supporting in the future. We’ll certainly be back next year.

Richard Cottrell, sales and marketing director, Vista Retail Support

In 2010 it was the tablet and last year it was mobile. So what’s the standout technology trend at this year’s NRF Expo?  In short, there isn’t one.

True, a look around the hardware providers shows that there are some eye-catching products on show. One is the in-store 3D TV which doesn’t require special glasses for you to get the full ‘in your face’ impact. This may take digital signage to a new level but is well short of revolutionary – and the fact remains that the medium will always come second to the quality of the message in influencing the shopper.

And that, it seems, is as good as it gets. So is this a let-down? Have manufacturers run out of ideas? The answer I think is a definite ‘no’. Manufacturers are understandably – and rightly – taking a bit of a breather as they consolidate what they already have. In other words, they are still looking to enhance the retail experience, but without necessarily having to invent something new.

This is entirely in tune with the times. Retailers are watching every penny of IT spend and will not be throwing out what they’ve got without a compelling reason. So, they may add a tablet solution to their EPOS system: what they won’t do is change their existing EPOS system to get the benefit of a tablet solution.

With the basic pieces of the technology picture now in place, the Show reflects a common desire to pull these together as a true omni-channel experience.

For some time, retailers have talked about creating a similar user feel for their on-line and bricks and mortar offerings, with varying degrees of success. The focus has now moved on to one of convergence – integrating tablets with mobile payments and mobile point of sale to create a seamless on-line, off-line and in-store experience for the customer.            

So, far from running out of steam, for manufacturers it’s a period of healthy realism. And, just like their retail customers, it’s a time for taking stock.

Now looking forward to taking a closer look at what the software scene has to offer.

Richard Cottrell, sales and marketing director, Vista Retail Support 

Last year was a big year for the technology industry. We saw the launch of the iPhone5 and the New iPad. Mobile and tablet devices are becoming very popular amongst shoppers while virtual retailing is something retailers are most certainly looking into.

But what’s to come in 2013 for retailers and shoppers?

There are some technological developments that the successful retailers of tomorrow will need to get to grips with today. Some include interactive televisions, in-store technologies, augmented reality, image recognition, and smart devices.

Latest figures suggest that retailers simply cannot afford to invest in these growth areas. Those 5 developments alone are expected to contribute around £2.4 billion worth of sales to retail by the end of 2013.

One of the key things about the impact of new technologies over the next two years is the way in which retailers ‘think’.

Today, most retailers think in terms of channels which, at the moment, loosely comprise of stores, online and mobile. In our view, thinking in terms of channels will become less relevant as new technologies both blur lines between them and add new ways of buying into the mix.

In the future what will matter more is an understanding all of the various ways in which a consumer engages with a retailer. Some of the points at which a customer may ‘touch’ the brand may be direct sales channels, others will play a supportive role; but all will form part of a wider ecosystem which ultimately drives the top line.

As a result, retailers retain a degree of scepticism over the profitability of individual channels and a greater focus on the profitability of the whole operation.  For many this will represent a fundamental shift and means that things like store based targets and working out return on investment become more of a challenge.

However, although a holistic view is more necessary retailers should still look at how individual parts of their operations work, what purpose they serve and how they are contributing. Indeed, this kind of knowledge will actually become more critical so that retailers can allocate resources appropriately and effectively.