Going Mobile in the Retail Environment

Considerations for selecting a mobile POS solution

Retailers considering the investment in mobile point of service (POS) solutions should evaluate a number of considerations as part of their up-front planning and assessment process in order to ensure the best fit solution and optimal success of their projects. As with any IT-oriented project, both total cost of ownership and expected return on investment should guide the decision-making process. Beyond these, primary considerations include seamless integration with existing retail
systems, utilization of standard business processes, adherence to payment industry security standards, and implementation and maintenance of the solution inclusive of mobile POS hardware devices. A solution that incorporates each of these items will deliver the best return for retailers’ mobile point of service investments.

Disney Sees 2.5% Increase In Comp Sales with New Oracle POS

After taking back ownership of its Disney Store brand, Disney has revamped the
in-store technology to create an experience that is designed to be
"the best 30 minutes of a child's day," said Paul Gainer, VP and General Manager, North America for Disney Stores Worldwide, during a tour of the newly opened 20,000 square foot Times Square store in New York. From 2004 until 2008 Disney had a licensing agreement with The Children's Place to market and sell the Disney brand in North American stores.

In November 2010 Disney completed the rollout of Oracle Retail POS into its global network of 330 stores worldwide. The Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) and SkillNet (partner and systems integration company) helped to complete the rollout into approximately 200 U.S. stores, more than 40 stores in Japan, and approximately 100 in Spain, Portugal, Italy and the UK.

The technology enhancements are improving the parent's experience as well as the child's. A point of sale upgrade from Oracle Retail is helping customers get through checkout quicker and more efficiently. Additionally mobile POS, implemented with Oracle and partner InfoGain, is allowing customers to complete their transactions at different locations throughout the store; children and their families can continue enjoying their in-store activities while the purchase is taking place. Read More...

Speaking in a broad sense:general flavors to choose from when it comes to Big Data solutions

• Custom build BigData frameworks like Teradata and VLDB implementations from Oracle that are proprietary frameworks designed to deal with large datasets. These frameworks are still very relational in orientation and are not designed to work with unstructured data sets.
• Data Warehouse Appliances like Oracle’s Exadata. This introduces the concept of DW-in-a-box where the entire framework needed for a typical DW implementation (the Hardware, Software Framework in terms of data store and Advanced Analytical tools) are all vertically integrated and provided by the same vendor as a packaged solution.
• Open Source NoSQL-oriented Big Data Frameworks such as Hadoop and Cassandra. These frameworks implement advanced analytical and mining algorithms such as Map/Reduce and are designed to be installed on commodity hardware for an MPP architecture with huge Master/Slave clusters. They are very good at dealing with vast amounts of unstructured, text-oriented information.
• Commercial Big Data Frameworks like AsterData and GreenPlum, which follow the same paradigm of MPP infrastructures but have implemented their own add-ons such as SQL-MR and other optimizations for faster analytics.

Infogain a Gold Sponsor of Oracle Retail CrossTalk 2011

Infogain is excited to announce its Gold Sponsorship of Oracle’s premier retail event, CrossTalk 2011, an exclusive gathering of retail executives from some of the most innovative retailers in the world.

Jun 15, 2011 – Infogain is excited to announce its Gold Sponsorship of Oracle’s premier retail event CrossTalk 2011, an exclusive gathering of retail executives from some of the most innovative retailers in the world. CrossTalk provides an excellent opportunity for networking and sharing insights and best practices among retail leaders across merchandising, planning, business information and IT.Read more..

Jim Eagleton’s Sharepoint Webinar Presentation

Jim Eagleton’s webinar presentation on ensuring a fast and smooth migration to SharePoint 2010.

Before you attempt an upgrade, perform the following steps:
● Run the pre‐upgrade checker
■ Stsadm command shipped with MOSS 2007 SP2
■ Provides inventory of farm
■ Checks for pre‐requisites and known issues
■ Makes no changes
● Identify all customizations in your environment
● Optional: Restructure your content or farms
● Test your upgrade process on a virtual or physical test farm
■ Address any issues that you find

To listen to the recorded webinar, click https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/817246782 . This link will also be posted in the events section of our website.

Kiddicare's Mobile Technology makes £200k in first 8 weeks

Kiddicare Celebrates the Success of its iPhone app and Mobile website

Kiddicare, the UK's number one independent baby and nursery product retailer, is proud to reveal it has achieved £200,000 combined sales, following the launch of their fully transactional iPhone app and mobile website, just eight weeks ago.

The launch of Kiddicare's mobile interface in November has made shopping on-the-go a reality for busy parents. The site has already generated in excess of £150,000 worth of additional orders. Between 2% and 5% of daily sales on kiddicare.com are starting to come from mobile devices. However, Kiddicare expect this figure to increase to 20% within 12 months.

Released in parallel to the mobile web service, Kiddicare's free 'Scan and Save' iPhone app has been downloaded by nearly 19,000 'i-savvy' parents. The fully transactional app, designed and integrated by retail mobility technology experts, Infogain, allows shoppers to scan high street products, compare prices with that of Kiddicare, who won't be beaten on price, and place orders through the award winning website.

The Kiddicare.com app, which launched on 19th November 2010, has generated £51,000 worth of direct sales from 675 orders including everything from £400 travel systems to £2 safety plugs. read more