Newsletter Articles
US Retail, EMV, NFC, and Mobile: Opportunity or Disaster?
April 30, 2013
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 [...]
Employees Who Care
February 19, 2013
RSR has long sung the virtues of an empowered, knowledgeable workforce. It’s time to also sing the virtues of employees who care enough to do the right thing in a timely way. I had a chance to see a dedicated employee in action, and I want to tell you about it. The woman in question [...]
The Future of Payments is Red Hot
December 11, 2012
Omni-channel retailing and customer centricity have been sweeping their way through the customer-facing side of the retail industry for at least the last five years. But one area that has languished in the portfolio of customer-facing interactions impacted by this wave of transformation is payments. However, I think we can safely say, no longer. The [...]
SAP Retail Forum: Making the Humdrum Valuable
October 16, 2012
At SAP’s recent Retail Forum in Dallas, one of our most interesting meetings was with Pierre Bourbonniere from STM, the company that operates Montreal’s public transportation system. While you may be thinking, “What could my retail operation learn from bus and subway operations?”, hang in there for a second: there’s a very interesting loyalty and [...]
Retail CIOs: Mobility, The Cloud, & BI
September 11, 2012
RSR had the opportunity to participate in a retail CIO-focused event on August 29th, hosted by CDM Media. CDM offers CIO summits for a number of industries (for example, they held events for consumer products and financial industry CIOs before and after the retail event), and the company has developed a successful formula for delivering [...]
Motorola’s Wireless Solutions Strategy: Give the People What They Want
September 11, 2012
I spent last week in London, having been invited by Motorola Solutions to attend their European wireless team’s inaugural analyst day. It was an ideal time to be there: the weather was perfect, retailers were more than happy to share their personal accounts of the impact the summer games had on their businesses (a topic [...]
The Future of Mobile Payments: Can’t Tell the Players without a Scorecard
August 21, 2012
The last two weeks have brought us an explosion of new mobile payment groups, initiatives and conversations. If you’re a retailer, you’re either part of one of these groups and initiatives or you’re scratching your head saying “What the heck is going on, and what’s the best way to safely save myself a few sheckels [...]
The FTC Warns Of Looming Oversight on ‘Do Not Track’
March 27, 2012
On March 26th, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission called on Congress to enact legislation to regulate companies that collect and trade information about consumers. The proposed legislation is targeted specifically at companies like Google, Experian and Acxium, but would impact a growing and apparently lucrative ecosystem of companies who collect, “enhance”, and sell consumer data. [...]
Facebook Sponsored Stories: How Not to be Relevant
March 20, 2012
At RSR, we talk a lot about the need for retailers to deliver relevant value to consumers. It’s a way of encapsulating why, for example, localization is important, i.e. consumers shouldn’t have to wade through a bunch of irrelevant stuff in order to get to real solutions for their lifestyle needs. It’s also a way [...]
The iTunes Hack Attack, Hiding in Plain Sight
March 13, 2012
Generally, we’re pretty tuned in to events happening in the retail world. But once in a while, we find out we’ve been completely blind to something until it hits us directly. So it has been with what appears to be a massive and ongoing security breach in the iTunes store. Coupling this incident with the [...]