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In many ways, 2004 will be seen as a technological turning point for retail: the year that many technologies that have been hyped for years started to become real.
Traditionally, retail has always been a mixed barcode for being technologically advanced. The largest retail giants—such as Wal-Mart—are among the most advanced companies in the world and are widely viewed as being on the cutting edge: companies that deploy technologies while other industries sit back and watch.
At the same time, the overwhelming majority—98.8 percent, according to Microsoft—of all retailers are tiny, even by small business standards of fewer than 100 employees. That 98.8 percent figure refers to single-store retailers.
Those small, independent retailers tend to be technology-averse and often use very old low-end POS (point-of-sale) systems and minimal state-of-the-art technology of any kind. In other words, while the largest retailers (Best Buy, Home Depot, Costco, Target, etc.) get most of the ink and do indeed aggressively try to leverage technology, there are a far larger number of retailers who are barely beyond typewriters.
Here at eWEEK.coms Retail Center, weve chosen the six most significant retail technologies in 2004. The reasons they all came into the spotlight this year is quite diverse, but they do share one common thread: Technology investments are now growing, not so much as an attempt to better rivals as much as a requirement for staying in business.
RFID
Talk about your hype. RFID has been talked about for many years, but it took the strong-arm tactics of Wal-Mart to push suppliers to take it seriously. January 2005 was never intended to be a true deadline, but it served its purpose: to get people to truly start working on getting RFID up and running. If nothing else, its provided plenty of jobs for people who make tools to help retailers co-exist with barcode and RFID during what the retailer expected to be a very lengthy transition.
RFID was beset with plenty of well-vocalized concerns about privacy, but the systems inability to function consistently under ideal conditions made such fears seem overblown.
Heres a short list of stories on how RFID influenced the retail scene:
- Will Users Get Buried Under RFID Data?
- Will Wireless Rewrite the RFID Landscape?
- Overblown RFID Privacy Fears Still Merit Attention
- Startup Rolls Out RFID Transition Tool
- RFID to Be Served 7-Eleven Style
- Best Buy Taking Baby Steps to Full RFID
- Integrated Device Could Ease RFID Process
Next Page: CRM and e-commerce.
A Year-End Look at Retail – Page 2
CRM
CRM has also existed for many years in various forms. But what made 2004 an important CRM year is that CRM played a critical behind-the-scenes role in several of the years other key technologies. Many of the more state-of-the-art POS approaches—including contactless—were based on gathering more data for CRM. As consumers continue abandoning greenbacks and checks for electronic payment options, the ability to gather, analyze and use tons of new data points puts CRM front and center. But its not definite that CRM is being used in the way intended, especially in the retail space. Do retailers want to merely better understand what people buy, or do they want to identify what specific customers buy, so they can be individually marketed, through e-mail, snail-mail or even custom messages zapped to their cell phones or PDAs?
Heres a short list of stories on how CRM influenced the retail scene:
- Epiphanys New CRM Apps Offer Instant Analysis
- Is Corporate Hoarding The CRM Goodies?
- Will Frustrated Store Managers Revolt Against Corporate CRM?
- Albertsons Learns The Legal Dangers Of CRM
- How Intimate a CRM Relationship Do Your Customers Really Want?
- Retail CRM: Does Data Create a Duty?
E-COMMERCE
During the first several years of e-commerce—say, from about 1994 through 2001— we experienced a technology in its infancy. After that, the initial rivalries (physical store executives protecting their turf from the online invaders) started to shrink as the economy bottomed out and the United States was attacked and went to war. The economy didnt truly show evidence of a strong recovery until early 2004, so thats when e-commerce started to get real again. This time, though, the technology and the business models had matured, and consumers and corporate buyers had gotten entirely comfortable with Web purchases. So 2004 was the first full year when we met the grownup (OK, older adolescent) e-commerce. The ability to cleanly perform e-commerce tricks—such as buying online and then picking up in-store—had been well-rehearsed, and few major retailers today cant do it in some form. But even online leader Best Buy stumbled, succeeding with the terribly difficult integration and programming challenges but dropping the ball with the elementary communication tasks.
Heres a short list of stories on how e-commerce influenced the retail scene:
- Keeping Seasonal Help Away From Customers
- Abandoned Shopping Carts May Be Good News
- Staples Automates Refunds
- Next-Gen Kiosks For the Holidays
- Study: Holiday Online Sales to Jump 20 Percent
- A Tailor-Made Technology Environment
- Best Buy Learns That Great Technology Is Little Help If Employees Dont Know About It
- Bringing Storefront Perks to Web Sales
- Aberdeen Report: True Multichannel Sales Rare
- Drawing The E-Commerce Battle Lines
- Site Helps Retailers Tout Local Deals
- Tracking Service Aims to Ease Product Returns
- Pity The Retail IT Pioneer
- A Lesson From Toys Were Us
A Year-End Look at Retail – Page 3
POS/PAYMENT SYSTEMS
Although the specific numbers run the gamut from eight to 20 or more years, many of todays largest retailers started the year with very old POS systems, or at least very old operating systems behind those POS systems. For much of that time, though, the old legacy systems were not in critical need of replacement. They did their job and did it admirably. It wasnt until this year and the imminence of RFID, contactless payment systems and sophisticated CRM applications that retailers saw the profitable things they would miss out on if they didnt upgrade. In 2004, retail IT execs suddenly had no choice but to at least seriously evaluate replacing their reliable legacy systems. This was a trend that certainly didnt go unnoticed in Redmond, with Microsoft making a serious play for the small retailer. Microsoft was still pushing to have POS mean point of service rather than point of sale. I put this right up there with the people at Digital who, after many decades of the industry calling them DEC, decided they didnt want to be called DEC anymore. They wanted to be called Digital Equipment or even Digital. A watch can be digital. They were just DEC. If Microsoft wants to change what the POS acronym stands for, theyre a couple of decades too late.
Heres a short list of stories on how POS technology influenced the retail scene:
- Convenience Chain CIO: Payment Systems Bleeding Stores Dry
- Retail Group to Help Integrate Worker Attedance
- Microsoft Has Its Eye On Small Retailers
- Device Lets POS Units Handle Wireless Transactions
- At Wal-Mart, Worlds Largest Retail Data Warehouse Gets Even Larger
- Teradata, SeeCommerce Alliance Promises Retail Out-of-Stock Help
- Microsofts POS Move May Make It a Viable Retail Option
- JDA, PeopleSoft Team Up To Help Retailers
- Curbing Retail Shrinkage With The Help of a Shrink
- Survey: Linux Has Long Way to Go in Retail
- Will Cell Phones, PDAs Become Retailers Promo Tools?
- Is Retail IT Being Killed By Complacency?
- Discover CIO: Retail Technology Ready For Major Changes
- Discover to Use Biometric To Combat Rivals
A Year-End Look at Retail – Page 4
SELF-CHECKOUT
As 2004 opened, many retailers had to fight several battles. First, theres Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart, by the way, is not a brutal competitor solely because of its size. Wal-Mart started out by opening stores in places that no respectable national retail chain ever would. Those are the same people running Wal-Mart today. The problem with Wal-Mart is not that its huge. The problem with fighting Wal-Mart is that its remarkably smart and that its huge. As Sears/Kmart are about to discover, being huge is a very short-lived advantage if you dont have the infrastructure and the brainpower to leverage the advantages. But the reasons for Wal-Marts dominance aside, its there and its a problem for every other large retailer.
Arguably the second-largest problem is staffing. The razor-thin margins that are the lifeblood of todays retailers pretty much mandate low wages for rank-and-file employees. Recruiting enough workers is difficult enough, but retaining them for months beyond their training period is darn near impossible. The self-checkout rage that reached its peak in 2004 was a retail industry attempt to simultaneously deal with both of these problems. The industry line is that self-checkout is not intended to result in layoffs, as those employees are incredibly rare and valuable. Instead, the theory holds that one-time cashiers can be put to work delivering services for customers. That might include carrying customers bags to their cars, helping to make more sandwiches during lunchtime or helping customers find their way and taste more samples. If this works, the theory holds, retailers could actually compete with Wal-Mart in a crucial way: better service and more services. If Wal-Mart rivals cant compete on price, then they can dominate on experience and value. Thats the theory, at any rate.
Heres a short list of stories on how self-checkout influenced the retail scene:
- Self-Service Need Not Be Self-Delusional
- Whats The Real ROI of Self-Checkout?
- Self-Checkout Security A Balancing Act
- Self-Checkout Faces Practical, Tech Hurdles
- Intelligent Cart Brings Jetsons-Style Shopping
Next Page: Industry consolidation.
A Year-End Look at Retail – Page 5
INDUSTRY CONSOLIDATION
Look to 2005 for the heavy-duty industry consolidation, but late 2004 gave us a good taste of whats coming when Kmart and Sears were mooshed together. Industry skeptics dismissed the move as the merger of the mediocre, pointing to marketing as well as technology problems suffered by both sides. There were even cynical suggestions that the merger was more about real-estate than inventory or technology. OK, we were among the cynical people saying those things. But its hard to see anything that initially suggests that this combination is going to be able to move faster or make better decisions than the pair did before. Yes, theyll have more revenue initially, but its hard to see how that will help. First, Wal-Mart will still be larger and, therefore, will have the advantage in being able to negotiate better rates. But more importantly, Wal-Marts strategic efforts are what fuels it, and Sears/Kmart has shown no sign of improving there. But Im confident that by the time I write this column late in 2005, Ill have more definitive answers.
Heres a short list of stories on how Industry Consolidation influenced the retail scene:
- Where America Shops Meets Where American Shoplifts
- Sears, Kmart Merger to Create Huge Retail Operation
Retail Center Editor Evan Schuman can be reached at Evan_Schuman@ziffdavis.com.
To read earlier retail technology opinion columns, please click here.