POS Systems

"People have said when checkout is working really well, it will feel like stealing. You grab a pair of shoes and you just walk out." That's how Michael Chui, a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute, describes the retail-checkout experience in your not-too-distant future.This coming transformation in the way you pay for items in bricks-and-mortar stores will occur through a network of

During the 2013 holiday season, Perry Ellis deployed Starmount's mobile selling and customer engagement solutions to better focus on line busting, engaging customers throughout the store and completing transactions on mobile devices. The solutions were rolled out in 60 Perry Ellis stores, boosting adoption rates and increasing the average transaction amounts for sales conducted with mobile devices. The top Perry Ellis stores conducted up to 16.4 percent of all transactions on mobile devices, enabling associates to deliver the high level of customer service for which Perry Ellis is renowned. 

Target's massive data breach continues to reverberate in the headlines, but in reality it's just one of countless attacks that affect the retail industry on a daily basis. Whether it's highly sophisticated malware developed out of Russia, local hit-and-run point-of-sale thieves or insider threats, retailers must adapt to this increasingly risky environment. First of all, it's important for retailers to understand that just because you meet PCI compliance doesn't mean you're not at risk. PCI is the bare minimum that your company should be doing to protect itself — but it won't stop today's more sophisticated attacks.

The retail battle is on: To help shoppers sort through the noise of the web, discover new products and receive an individualized or special shopping experience like that found in a high-end store, online retailers have pulled out all the stops. In addition to adopting product recommendation technologies aimed at providing an Amazonian shopping experience, some retailers are focusing efforts on the product mix.

Ahead of a Federal Trade Commission conference Wednesday on the privacy implications of mobile device tracking in stores, airports, hotels and other public places, a new website is launching where consumers can opt out of having their location information collected. Going live Tuesday, the opt-out platform was built by The Wireless Registry for the Future of Privacy Forum, which developed a code of conduct adopted by 11 mobile location analytics firms. 

With approximately 1.5 billion smartphones currently in use today, it's safe to say mobile is radically changing consumer retail behavior. To maximize in-store sales opportunities and minimize hurdles to purchase, retailers must change their approach to reach a new generation of consumers steeped in a mobile lifestyle. But how should retailers best interact with their customers in this new age of mobile? A new innovation from Apple could be one answer: iBeacon. 

Listen in to this lively webinar where we outline steps retailers need to take to make sure data breach doesn’t happen to them.

This past January, as I've done for the past five years or so, I trekked into New York City's Jacob Javits Convention Center for the National Retail Federation's (NRF) Big Show. I was met, as I was in past years as well, by retailers from around the world. I spent time at this year's conference attending presentations and press conferences; meeting and interviewing retail industry execs in the press room; and walking the vast exhibit hall floors trying to find the "next big things" in retail technology. Here are a few of my takeaways

As to be expected at events in any industry, executives at the National Retail Federation's Big Show earlier this month lapsed into lazy talk, bandying about vague notions such as "customer-centric solutions," while ticking off hot retail buzz terms like "personalization" and "omnichannel selling" without always delivering concrete examples of what those terms will mean in 2014. But along with the nebulousness came some meaty insight on what's poised to revolutionize how retailers serve shoppers: big data. IBM Chairman and CEO Ginni Rometty did a good job of demystifyng the concept. 

High-end fashion brands have been replacing decades-old clientelling methodologies (e.g., black books and handwritten index cards) with iPads and customer management systems that provide employees access to customer information on-the-go. Mobile technology enables store associates to both offer the right product or service to consumers at the right time and to transfer customer ownership into a centralized database instead of storing it in the employee's head. In high-end retail environments, where a one-on-one shopping experience is the norm, arming individual sales associates with mobile devices can help increase sales.