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Author Archives: Nikki Baird

Omni-Channel Strategy vs. Tactics: The Difference between Planning and Doing

20 May 2013, 04:00

Last week was probably the height of spring conference season, and I had my hands full with two conferences: Epicor Insights, the software company’s user conference, and Next Gen Retail, one of those business meeting “speed dating” events, put on by GDS International (for the record, RSR was the content/analyst partner for that event). The [...]

JDA Wants to Change the World

13 May 2013, 22:10

Nikki Baird

As I sat down to write this article, I thought back to how long I’ve known JDA. I can’t attest that I’ve attended Focus, JDA’s user conference, for ten years, but I have certainly known the company as a retail analyst for that long. I haven’t always agreed with the directions JDA has taken over [...]

Four Big Cross-Channel Questions

6 May 2013, 15:36

Nikki Baird

Last week I fielded an inquiry about the biggest questions retailers are asking in cross-channel right now, and I figured the answer was worth sharing. So here are the top questions that I hear retailers currently asking about their omni-channel strategies and/or operations. These are the “big” questions, mind you, not the tactics. What is [...]

US Retail, EMV, NFC, and Mobile: Opportunity or Disaster?

30 April 2013, 10:47

Nikki Baird

Last week I attended the CARTES North America conference. It is an event focused more directly on credit card issuers and the technologies that support them. So what was I doing there? Well, increasingly it seems that the future these industry players are building will have direct impact on how retailers engage with customers, and [...]

Omni-Channel Retail Performance Measures: Déjà Vu

23 April 2013, 10:08

Nikki Baird

A long time ago, around 2009, I wrote about killing same store sales as a comparative measure for tracking retail performance. My argument at the time was that store sales were no longer an accurate measure of a retailer’s health, thanks to the strong growth in online. I think same store sales (SSS) lingered even [...]

Ceridian Analyst Days: Redefining the HCM Platform

16 April 2013, 10:43

Nikki Baird

Last week Ceridian HCM invited out a good dozen-plus analysts to an event in Chicago to catch us all up to speed on developments at the company. As best I can tell, I was the only vertically-oriented analyst there, which speaks strongly to the company’s position in retail these days. I am admittedly not an [...]

Tough Love: An In-Depth Look at Retail Pricing Practices

8 April 2013, 11:01

Nikki Baird

Retailers continue to escalate the number of price changes they send to stores and other channels. Their field human resource infrastructure groans under the sheer weight of the work effort involved in keeping signage and tags up to date, but pressured by perceived consumer price sensitivity and increased competitive pressures, these price changes continue. This [...]

Walmart Blames Continued First Quarter Sales Slump on New Consumer Technology

1 April 2013, 10:23

Nikki Baird

Walmart’s woes continue as more leaked emails reveal a growing concern among company executives over a new consumer technology that promises to completely disrupt the mass merchant’s business model. While retailers like Best Buy struggle to combat showrooming and retailers like JCPenney appear to be failing miserably at redefining the future of the store, Walmart’s [...]

With Dynamic Pricing, Stores Lose

26 March 2013, 12:09

Nikki Baird

Pricing has been on my mind a lot lately, not least because Paula and I just wrapped up writing our 7th annual pricing benchmark (check back on our home page on 4/11 – it’ll be there). But I also came across a recent article from Stores Magazine that really cemented something for me. Two things, [...]

The Best Briefings Ever

18 March 2013, 10:45

Nikki Baird

Like all analyst firms, RSR takes briefings from vendors of all kinds. Our business model is unique in that we don’t provide analysis of vendor capabilities for sale to the marketplace, so briefings are actually something of a less risky proposition with us than you might find with other firms – there is no research [...]

Linda Wolfe
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Author Archives: Nikki Baird

Omni-Channel Strategy vs. Tactics: The Difference between Planning and Doing

US Retail, EMV, NFC, and Mobile: Opportunity or Disaster?

Omni-Channel Retail Performance Measures: Déjà Vu

Ceridian Analyst Days: Redefining the HCM Platform

Tough Love: An In-Depth Look at Retail Pricing Practices

Walmart Blames Continued First Quarter Sales Slump on New Consumer Technology

With Dynamic Pricing, Stores Lose

The Best Briefings Ever

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