The NRF Loss Prevention Conference & EXPO is the nation’s leading retail-specific loss prevention conference. NRF’s event focuses on key issues: organized retail crime, online fraud, eFencing, interviewing, investigating, pandemic preparedness and more! The networking, education, and solutions is unparalleled.

Join us in Atlanta and connect with the who’s who of retail’s loss prevention.

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Online, Register at TDWI

Companies who conduct business online, or whose entire business is tied to the web, have many things in common. Most notable is that they collect large and constantly growing amounts of data they need to analyze and report on. Understanding customer behavior, segmenting customers for market targeting, assessing the effectiveness of advertising or marketing campaigns, optimizing websites, or a host of other questions may mean the difference between business success and failure. Companies in online advertising, marketing, publishing or other web-related service providers may have a greater challenge in terms of data volume as well as the need to provide fast insight to their customers as part of their service. Off-the-shelf web analytics products don’t provide the detailed data or enable the flexible reporting, what-if analysis or predictive analytics that online businesses require, particularly when the web site data needs to be enriched with other enterprise data sources for a more comprehensive story. This means building analytic applications that meet your unique requirements.

Simple yet effective

Attend any retail conference and you’ll find a plethora of high tech solutions designed with one thing in mind: increasing sales. Solutions for tracking shoppers and customers. BI tools for analyzing all your KPI, dash boards, portals. There are replenishments systems, highly sophisticated Automated Markdown suggestions. At POS there are suggested selling, and client loyalty schemes.

I believe I have discovered a tool to boost sales, that costs a fraction of the price of these technologies, and they don’t require super users to manage, no long term relationships with vendors, and unfortunately for people like me, no systems consultants to help choose and implement hem.

I came across this effective solution, not from dealing with hundreds of ladies specialty retailers, not from dozens of trade shows, nor from reading the pile of retail magazines that arrive at my door or in-box. Rather I learned this by spending time with my wife. The way most things are discovered, I learned it from real life experiences.

The idea is based on a long known principal. The longer a shopper remains in the store, the more likely they are to make a purchase, and the more items they are likely to select. Like most men, I am not fond of spending the day shopping, unless its at a Best Buy, Barnes and Noble or perhaps a Home Depot. So when I am asked to spend some time with my wife choosing an outfit for an upcoming event, I am not the happiest of people. This unhappiness is enhanced even further by standing around, pacing the aisles until my wife appears from within a changing room. I inevitably find myself feeling miserable and doing my best to make sure my wife notices. If I do my job well enough, it always results in a quick exit from the store.

I realized my pain is lessened considerably by those stores that provide some sort of pain relief for husbands like me, with the simple use of , get ready… CHAIRS!! I find if I can sit, and perhaps read, or amuse myself on my iPhone, then I dont mind the wait nearly as much. If I don’t mind the wait, my wife feels more relaxed to shop, try on and make that all important purchase. I now find myself suggesting shopping locations that are husband-friendly. And bless those stores that have even thought of providing magazines or a TV for the shopper’s husbands to pass the time. Pure GENIUS.

It amazes me everytime I visit a specialty apparel store, and there are no seats next to the changing room. Its the simplest, most effective and least expensive way to extend the time your shopper stays in the store to browse. When the husband is happy, the wife is happy. When the wife is happy, she shops more. When she shops more, the retailer is happy.

All for the price of a chair!

NRF’s Washington Leadership Conference is where the power of retailing comes to Capitol Hill. For over seventy years, this conference has been recognized as the event where leaders in the retail industry meet with leaders in the government to address issues which impact the retail community and to chart the course of business in the future. In the constantly changing political environment, NRF is attentive to the legislative agenda and federal rule making process, and actively seeks to influence the scope and direction of proposals which could directly affect the retail industry. Information on these activities is continuously communicated to the NRF membership so they can inform and educate elected members of Congress. NRF lobbyists in Washington, teaming up with NRF members and state retail associations throughout the country forming our “grassroots” network, have consistently delivered the retail message effectively on Capitol Hill.

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Better Data Means Better Business
Performance Management and Quality Data—Keys to Profitability in a Recovering Economy
Explore the Agenda | Meet the Instructors | Browse the Featured Topics

Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned BI executive, we have courses that will not only add to your professional worth but will also advance your business’s potential for increased profitability. Our World Conference in Chicago offers access to six days of in-depth education from in-the-trenches experts and industry heavyweights on essential business intelligence, data management, data modeling, and much more!

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RFID Journal
Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort
Orlando, Fl

Retail specific tracks show how RFID is being applied to solve retail problems

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Dimensional Modeling Courses

TDWI Series Seminar

Red Lion Hotel on Fifth Avenue-Seattle
1415 Fifth Avenue
Seattle, WA 98101

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An RFP, by its nature, is a very detailed document. It is the primary tool for assessing the fit of a vendor’s product, and the viability of the vendor. The response must offer the organization  all the information they need in order to make that decision.

1. The RFPs will need to be objectively scored once they are completed by the vendor. The most common approach is to give each question a Value score (say 1-5) with the higher score being the most important. The vendor should not see this value (so their responses are not “embellished”).

A negative response to a requirement would be given a 0 score, and a positive result a value of say 5. In this way some responses can be scored 1-4 if it is partially acceptable.

The score for the entire RFP is then merely the sum of each question’s Value weight times the response score.

2. In addition to the Value score, I suggest having an “Importance” score that the vendor can see. This allows you to indicate to the vendor which are must haves and which are “wish lists”.

The first thing a vendor does when an RFP is received, is to  review it in order to determine whether they will take the time to respond. RFPs, if done correctly, are very time consuming to complete. If they see too many requirements they can not satisfy, they may decline to respond. If however they understand that these are wish list requests only, they can make a more informed decision.

3. The biggest trap that companies fall into is the blurring of requirements and specifications

There is a tendency to indicate “how” the system should behave, rather than “what” the system needs to provide. That is, Requirements vs Specifications.

This is best illustrated with a number of examples.

If your current SKU has a Dept/class prefix, ask yourself why? If it is only for sequencing reports then indicate the sequencing as a requirement, not for style coding.

Do you want to see 8 weeks of history so you can calculate a sell-thru, or should you just ask for the statistics you need?

Are you asking for every report you have today, or for the data fields and sequences they come in? There may be other ways to do the same thing in other systems.

Asking the wrong question may lead you to expensive modifications, or worse, rejecting the right vendor for the wrong reasons.

4. Give everyone the same opportunities. Each vendor should receive the document at the same time. A conference call with all vendors to ask questions should be organized, all at the same time. (so every vendor hears the others questions). If an extension date is granted to one, then all should receive it. Each vendor should then be given .5-1 day to present their solutions. Specify the deadline for each vendor to indicate their intention to respond.

5. Send the documents out via email, in an excel format, with password protection and fields hidden as necessary. This will allow easy scoring when returned, and ensures everyone gets it at the same time. Ask for a return verification of receipt.

6. Finally, call ahead and let the vendor know they will be receiving an RFP and to whom to send it. This sounds obvious, but many vendors will lose the RFP in someones in-box and then ask for extensions and that upsets the evaluation process.

Please feel free to email me if you have any questions or comments (contact page). I will be more than happy to help.

Lewis

Live Chats is a web alternative to sending email or phoning a support line. Its a window that opens on your screen, and allows you to instant message with a person, in live mode, at the site you are on. In the soft-goods sector, it does not seem to be catching on the same way.

I think its time that fashion retailers take a closer look at this technology. Especially if you now provide phone support for the same purpose. Why?…

1. Live chats allow your Personal Shopping Assistant to handle more than one call at a time. Where as telephone calls require complete undivided attention, Live Chat allows you to respond to more than one person at a time. This fact will probably go unnoticed to the customer you are serving, and you, the retailer, will require less staff.
2. Live Chats have the “feel” of instant gratification. There is no reaching for the phone, dialing a number, answering phone prompts and listening to Musak. The consumer is already on the site, and needs only click a link. Their frustration is significantly reduced.
3. While waiting for an operator to join the chat, the shopper is free to do other things on the web site, reducing inconvenience of holding a phone and watching the time.
4. Live Chat, allows the support person to send documents to the shopper. Photos of products, item reviews can be sent and viewed while the conversation is still taking place, suggestions for alternate styles can be made in real time.
5. Languagae and accents become less of an issue. Retailers can outsource without as much worry about language barriers, or the communications being misunderstood.

There are many good products available that will provide a positive shopping experience for your customer. Other than the obvious cost factor, there are many features to consider. I suggest having a look at this chat review site for a list of chat software providers, as well as complete list of features to consider. One other that I like, that is somehow not on that list, is Live Person.

I have done my best to listen and to observe, and tried to take away a little from what each has had to offer. A consultant, after all, is only as good as the sum of their experiences.

I would like to make note of one very special person whom I have known for some 27 or 28 years. We worked together in the early days of retail at STS Systems, and little did we know how much the world of retail systems would change, or where our professional careers would take us two and a half decades later.

Last week RIS News announced its top 10 most influential people in Retail. My good friend and former colleague, Diane Randolph, CIO at Reitman’s,  is on that list.

Now, amongst the people whose paths have crossed mine, many were visionaries, many were intelligent, were mentors, gifted speakers, or just generally nice people. Diane is among the few that I can say shines in each of those categories. And as a friend, she is warm, humorous, generous, patient and sincere.

I have learned much from Diane over the years (and hope she might have learned a thing or two from me), and I want to congratulate her for all she has accomplished.

Well done Diane, its been a joy watching your successes. There is no doubt, more to come!