A month has past since APG returned from NRF 2015. Retailers of all types and sizes attend NRF to discover the most cutting-edge solutions available to them. Retailers can also attend an array of educational sessions to learn from the brightest minds within our industry. At the show, I attended the 12th annual RIS/IHL Group Store Systems Study session, “2015 IT Forecast – Key Takeaways and Findings.” Every year this session is well attended–this year the room was packed.

Panelists:

– Greg Buzek, President, IHL Consulting
– Grant Shih, VP IT Development & Enterprise Architecture, Carter’s
– Alan Outlaw, VP Commerce Technologies, Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions

Here are some key takeaways I gathered from the session:

• 2014 holiday sales were up 1.8-3.2% in store and up 12-16% online. Mobile shopping was up over 50% and 84% of shoppers used digital tools before and during their trip to a store. Consumers have come to expect that good deals happen during the entire holiday period-not just during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This last holiday season, we saw pockets of mobility. This was enabled by store associates: stock availability, up-sells, queue busting, and self-service.
• Retailer store count is expected to rise 3.2% , and store remodels will rise 3.1% in 2015.
• EMV, predictive analytics and geolocations appear predominately on the retail horizon in 2015.
• There will be a lot of consumer demand for EMV. In the wake of last year’s major retailer breaches, consumers are now aware and expect retailers to be accountable and up to date with their HW / SW.
• It’s important to deliver a seamless experience from online to store and every channel in between. Retailers need to create a personalized check out experience both in store, online, and on the mobile devices that are in the hands of customers.
• There will be a 6% increased for planned spending in omni-channel technology in 2015. Implementing omnichannel integration is the number one priority for retailers in 2015, followed by advanced CRM/loyalty programs, and Mobile for Associates. Retailers are currently struggling to manage customers across multiple channels.
• Retailers IT budgets will rise about 3% in 2015.
• Major infrastructure changes are happening (bandwidth / wifi). Studies show that sales go up an estimated 3.2% with WiFi infrastructure upgrades. Increased WAN is required to serve video beacons and the omni experience.
• There will be a rise of distributed order management systems in the future of POS architecture. 63% of retailers expect their future POS architecture to be distributed ordered management with front-end POS.
• 23% of retailers within the study intend to purchase new mobile POS hardware in the next 0-12 months.
• On average it takes retailers one year for new software or hardware to be deployed after a decision has been made.
• Omnichannel- its not about matching your competitors, it’s about making smarter investments. Retailers need to be able to create a seamless experience across all channels, anytime, anywhere and anyhow. Most retailers miscalculate the amount of process changes that are required to implement the omnichannel experience.
• Understand the total ecosystem: product life cycle, sourcing, distribution ecomm, wholesale channels. Look at the whole ecosystem of going through the enterprise process.
• Focus on customers, not channels; create a culture where you can experiment (and fail); and get outside of a purely retail mindset.