Evan Schuman

An oft-heard complaint about retail CRM programs is that they are a waste of money when—as happens frequently—the retailer never uses them to connect with customers or even uses individualized information at all. The naysayers who said privacy resistance could backfire were given a lot of ammunition recently when $40 billion grocery giant Albertsons was […]

A dairy truck driver pulls up to a 7-Eleven convenience store and is preparing to deliver crates of milk when the store manager greets him. “Hold on a moment,” the manager says, as he looks at an RFID readout on his PDA. “These crates over here are bad. Sure, theyre registering a good temperature now, […]

Historically, the two most difficult technology decisions involve migration. Put simply: when to get into a technology/platform and when to get out. A senior Best Buy executive this week gave a much needed reminder that while exit/entrance issues get all the headlines, its the detail-ridden implementation/execution issues that usually decide success or failure. /zimages/7/28571.gifTo read […]

Best Buy has gone public with its RFID plans, pledging to move all of its major suppliers to start delivering RFID-compliant tags for all product cases and pallets by Jan. 2, 2006. The deadline for those suppliers to support all product cases and pallets is May 2007. But the $25 billion Fortune 100 retailer said […]

In retail IT circles today, no issue generates as much concern—if not outright panic—as does security. You name it, were scared of it. Thats true when the topic is hackers trying to break in and steal credit card info, terrorists wanting to poison the apples, gun-toting bandits with their eyes on cash-register cash or the […]

Linux penetration into retail isnt nearly as significant as commonly believed, according to a new study from industry analyst firm Venture Development Corp. (VDC). “Theres a lot of talk, a lot of news around Linux and a lot of hype,” said Mike Liard, senior analyst at VDC and a co-author of the report. But its […]

With PDAs and cell phones getting more advanced, one retail transaction vendor wants to turn those consumer gadgets into two-way, advertisement-friendly checkout devices. A major roadblock for razor-thin-margin retailers adopting new checkout and loyalty programs is the cost of buying the many new pieces of hardware, plus the cost of integrating the software into legacy […]

What do you do if youre a struggling second-tier credit card company and your main advantage is offering lower prices to retailers? One approach is to position yourself as more convenient and more modern than your competitors and to focus on places that your rivals dont dominate. Thats a big part of the strategy behind […]

Todays retail payment space is ripe for radical change, says the CIO for Morgan Stanleys Discover Financial Services Inc. unit. And when radical change happens, it can shake up an industry, and market leaders can find themselves in a market that is much less friendly than before. “Ive never seen so much change in a […]

Are retail IT execs too comfortable and timid to be effective? Are legacy systems so extensive, the fundamental infrastructure so adequate and the margins so tight that modernization is too much work and too risky? Those decidedly uncomfortable questions were raised by the CIO of Discover Financial in an eWEEK.com interview. She pointed to successful […]

When Toys “Were” Us announced that it was going to abandon the toy business, the toy chain was widely seen as another victim of Wal-Mart. But the truth is, the move stemmed from the companys own inability to use technology to get closer to customers. The traditional fear of technology is that it replaces people […]

A large French electrical equipment supplier on Tuesday introduced a way for suppliers to more seamlessly integrate RFID capabilities into existing equipment, which could lessen the supplier burden and possibly accelerate and broaden RFID adoption. TCP Open, the approach unveiled by $9 billion Schneider Electric, allows a suppliers PLC (programmable logic controller) automation systems to […]