Europe’s largest end-to-end retail solutions exhibition and conference RBTE has been and gone for another year but the innovation displayed at the event is set to shake things up in retailing circles for some time to come.
There have been a number of articles published on our parent title Essential Retail highlighting the solutions showcased at this year’s RBTE, but below we’ve collated further news and comment from five of the technology providers that were present at the London event, which summarises some of the key themes discussed over the two days.
Jim Kander, director of retail at mobility solutions provider Spectralink, said: “It’s exciting that retailers at RBTE wanted to talk to us about the communication solutions we can provide them to better serve in-store customers.
“Improved customer interaction is the key to building customer loyalty in today’s crowded retail marketplace. We’re also seeing increased interest in robustness from retailers. Companies are beginning to realise that while having big data and data analytics can significantly improve their business models and increase profit margins, the volume of data they’ve collected is wasted if retail employees don’t have the right tools to access it when and where they need to – for example, on the shop floor while attending to customers.”
He added: “Retailers have also been keen to discuss how to minimise customers’ ‘time to transaction’, a traditionally challenging section of the customer journey for retail store workers to manage.
“They’re realising that in order to truly master every step of the customer’s path to purchase, they need to start with a communications solution that joins up all the traditionally fragmented dots across a retailer’s infrastructure. Only then can they fill all the gaps that were previously missing in their endeavour to dynamically give customers the personalised service they expect today.”
New cloud-based retail technology vendor, iVend, officially launched to the UK market at this year’s RBTE.
The company showcased its fully integrated end-to-end Retail Management Suite solution, which incorporates all processes, from in‐store management, head office, back-end store operations and inventory to analytics, loyalty and couponing from the Cloud. iVend’s mobile point of sale (PoS) solution enables retailers of all sizes – from pop-ups and SME boutiques to large retail outfits – to manage the entire customer transaction away from the traditional till.
With the aim of driving the future of wallets and purses, iVend suggests that its digital loyalty solution enables retailers to deliver a more targeted, experiential approach to loyalty, as well as driving more meaningful experiences and extend beyond the traditional discount mentality.
Using Passbook technology, it gives retailers an opportunity to tap into the growing trend for mobile, geo-locating customers to trigger loyalty offers direct to their smartphones. The show gave iVend a chance to highlight this pass technology, via a fundraising collaboration with cancer care charity Marie Curie. Visitors downloading the vendor’s charity pass saw £1 donated by the company to the charity.
Communications provider Vodat used RBTE to showcase its Unified Payment Service, which it said provides a viable alternative to P2PE scope reduction.
An integrated in-store payment solution, which has been validated by Coalfire, the Unified Payments Service isolates Chip and PIN entry devices (PEDs) from the point of sale and the rest of the in-store environment by deploying a managed firewall to segment the IP-connected PEDs on the network. As a result, the PoS and any other connected systems are removed from the scope of PCI DSS.
Vodat says that the solution allows retailers to achieve and maintain PCI DSS compliance in their cardholder present environments. It added that the architecture and approach used by the Unified Payment Service means retailers can reduce scope without the need to invest in a PCI P2PE solution.
Cloud-based PoS provider Cybertill demonstrated a new module for its end-to-end ERP solution, at this year’s RBTE.
Enterprise eBay was launched at the show, bringing with it a new way for retailers to sell products on eBay. Cybertill’s solution is a single system that allows retailers to sell in-store, online, over the phone and across third-party websites, while having a real-time view of stock across all outlets and throughout their supply chain – and the new module allows businesses to either ring fence allocated stock for eBay, pick from all available stock throughout their estate, or cherry pick from certain selected locations.
Ahead of the 2016 introduction of new Polymer bank notes, Secure Retail used RBTE to highlight its latest Polymer bank note readers.
Through a partnership with electronic shelf label solutions provider Displaydata, Secure Retail was also able to present a range electronic labelling solutions and show how this emerging technology can transform retail.
Essential Retail Innovation Blog