» Software SmartStores

Wal-Mart to deploy ‘smart’ network

September 11, 2008 — admin

Wal-Mart is phasing out its current satellite-delivered media network of screens in stores and replacing it with a new digital network. The rollout, to about 300 stores and to all superstores, will be completed in time for the holiday season.

The new network is powered by Internet Protocol Television, or IPTV, and it allows for content and advertising to be monitored and controlled down to a single screen. By 2010, the network will be deployed to all of Wal-Mart’s 27,000 screens in its 3,000 stores, according to Progressive Grocer.

Stephen Quinn, CMO at Wal-Mart, says that every screen and every message will have a purpose, and “we will be analyzing point-of-sale data on an ongoing basis to deliver a shopper-centric communications platform.” He added that it is “the first shopper-intelligent network at retail.”

Advertisers will be able to target by store, by screen, by day and by time of day, and will be able to change messages more frequently than the current in-store network.

Source: ft.com

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Smart Self-Service kiosks

September 2, 2008 — admin

STRATHAM, NH, Sep 03, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) — NextChoice, the Smart Self-Service(TM) company, today announced that Giant Eagle has taken delivery of its intelligent self-service kiosk ordering system.

Powered by new IBM AnyPlace(TM) Kiosks, NextChoice’s flagship NextWave Intelligent Self-Service software suite is allowing customers in more than 30 Giant Eagle GetGo stores to place orders directly at the sandwich counter, significantly reducing lines and waiting time, while simultaneously allowing customers to shop in the store for additional grocery items.

“We are pleased with the results thus far,” said Jon Fischer, business area director of Giant Eagle retail operations. “By integrating into our IBM point of sale, NextChoice enables us to efficiently produce the right amount and variety of products to best meet customers’ needs. In addition, we gain greater central management of our own promotions and menu design, enabling us to more quickly bring new initiatives to market.”

The NextChoice Self-Service offering unifies customer ordering and payment with the collection and management of customer transaction data and preferences into one fully integrated, centralized solution platform.

“This is an excellent example of NextChoice working with leading technology companies like IBM to deliver solutions that help our mutual clients win in the marketplace,” said Dick Andersen, CEO of NextChoice. “It’s all about providing client value, about providing integrated offerings that help them enhance the buying experience for customers patronizing their stores.”

gianteagle.com

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Intelligentz & Ubisense deliver CartMotion

August 7, 2008 — admin

Intelligentz Corporation and Ubisense have partnered to deliver a revolutionary solution for retail stores. The CartMotion product combines Ubisense’s precise real-time location system (RTLS) with Intelligentz’s analytical engine. The valuable data provided on consumer behavior, conversion rate and asset management enables retailers to improve sales conversion, productivity and customer service.

“The CartMotion application required a RTLS provider that could deliver a precise location system that supported our analytical engine” said Jerry Flores, Vice President of Business Development for Intelligentz Corporation. “With RTLS, CartMotion is able to capture accurate data movement within six inches of a cart’s exact location.”

For the first time in the retail industry, CartMotion provides valuable data to both retailers and manufacturers. The system delivers detailed data on consumers’ shopping behaviors throughout the retail environment including: consumer shopping patterns, wait times, traffic counts by category, time spent in each category, retail conversion rates and asset management. The Ubisense sensors are discreetly positioned around the store perimeter and once installed may be employed to also track other items as the need arises.

Richard Green, CEO Ubisense, added: “We are very pleased to be working with Intelligentz who are truly developing the next generation of retail applications involving precise location.”

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Not so smart facial recognition machine

July 3, 2008 — admin

Facial Recognition

The Japanese want to ensure that their young citizens cannot purchase cigarettes from cigarette vending machines have come up with an RFID based vending machine with facial recognition software.

More than 570,000 cigarette vending machines were fitted with RFID readers so that their age verification cards could be checked before cigarettes were dispensed to them. People without age verification cards could make purchases using the face recognition system which recognized the facial features of the person and in case it believed that the person is over the legal age of twenty then only the cigarettes were dispensed to them but one of the reporters managed to fool the system using fake pictures of a fifty year old man and female celebrity in her thirties and get cigarettes for himself.

The face-recognition machines rely on cameras that scan the purchaser’s face for wrinkles, sagging skin and other signs of age. Facial characteristics are compared with a database of more than 100,000 people, and if the purchaser is thought to be well over 20 years old (the legal age), the sale is approved. If the purchaser looks too young, they are asked to prove their age by inserting a driver’s license.

The company responsible for these vending machines is now working on a more advanced system that will make sure each face belongs to a real human, but they are unable to say when these new machines will be put into place.

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Sun in the retail space

May 29, 2008 — admin

A number of years ago, Sun Microsystems looked at the future of retail and announced that SmartStores would make shopping super easy.
http://www.sun.com/br/0305_ezine/ret_smart.html

Since then Sun have introduced 2 customizable retail solutions, “Sun Retail Store Processor” and “Sun Retail Integration Architecture Software” where they claim that their innovations are based on open standards and can cater for any sizable growth.

Sun also claim that ten of the top 20 retailers – including Amazon, eBay, and Wal-Mart, depend on Sun systems for critical business operations. Sun could turn out to be a big player in retail and RFID, and spurring Sun toward retail solutions could be spurred on by the fact that some of their traditional businesses have been in decline.

Given Suns healthy bank balance and aquisition of MySQL (an open source database), it will be interesting to see what they bring to the retail space.

To see what Sun is up to in retail, visit the retail section of their website:
http://www.sun.com/retail/

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Fujitsu Smart Stores?

May 22, 2008 — admin

Back in January 2004 Fujitsu wrote a report called “Smart Stores” where they report on the future of retail regarding consumer expectations being matched by retailers having to use new technologies to keep a competitive edge. To do so, they reported that retailers must employ a system of cost-cutting technology that yields solid ROI and recognized benefits to customers. That report can be found here:
http://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/SOL/ftxs/article/01.04_SmartStores-upd.pdf

So now it is July 2008. Has anything changed? Where are they now with retail? Fujitsu unsurprisingly is still focused on retail and do offer these retail solutions:

Retail Directions software – a full-featured software solution for grocery, liquor, fuel and general merchandise channels.
TeamPoS 2000 – an end-to-end point-of-sale and retail merchandising management platform designed for specialty retailers.
GlobalSTORE – a complete suite of products that help retailers to create, deliver and track loyalty programs and targeted offers and promotions.

To find out more about their solutions, visit this page: http://www.fujitsu.com/retail

Self-checkout systems, new multimedia displays, electronic shelf-labeling and fraud detection systems are just some of the Fujitsu innovations that they tout today. They claim that this technology dramatically improves retail experiences for customers while delivering cost savings for retailers. Fujitsu also have RFID solutions, but it isn’t apparent that they are using RFID in retail in a way that their 2004 report would suggest.

Given their involvement in a wide range of technology, it seems just a matter of time before Fujitsu will actually have a solution that resembles their 2004 ‘Smart Stores’ report. As retailers becomes more competitive with each other and with the world Wide Web, look for Fujitsu to be a big player in supplying solutions for retailers that wish to open up smart stores.

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The first smartstores

May 15, 2008 — admin

SmartStores is not just a future vision of retail, it is a reality today. There are many stores that use RFID technology and some retail outlets even use smart cards, smart scales, and smart shelves today.

Retailers such as Pak’n Save in New Zealand supply hand held scanners where customers can scan their own grocery items before being placed in their shopping cart. In Malaysia, smart shelves are used to pinpoint the exact location of books in Multimedia University Library. In the USA, Wallmart – one of the biggest users of RFID, insist that their suppliers also use this technology. But to be a true SmartStore, retail outlets need item level RFID tagging, not just RFID tagging at pellet or case level. The first stores in the world to become SmartStores were two BGN stores back in 2006.

BGN a Dutch Bookseller, was the first to deploy item-level RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) in an SOA (service oriented architecture) in 2006. Unlike early generation RFID solutions that tagged at the pallet or case-level, BGN is using item-level RFID to track the movement of individual books. This provides BGN with unique real-time visibility into both their store inventory and the overall supply chain. BGN is deploying technology from four Progress product lines that deliver this unique retail application: Progress(R) OpenEdge(R) as the platform for all transactions processed by the stores, Apama(R) ESP for processing the RFID data, Sonic ESB(R) as the integration backbone for the store automation applications and Progress(R) EasyAsk for natural language access to the application by end users.

In 2007 BGN was approved as a “Laureate” in the ‘Computerworld Honors Program‘ for their Selexyz ‘SmartStores’. This program recognizes outstanding leaders of the information technology revolution.

To learn more about Selexyz ‘SmartStores’ watch the video below.