After the punctuation of Christmas and New Year, the business of Business is back in full swing. Retailers are announcing results and discussing plans for how technology will drive competitive advantage this year.

A New Year – and with it, as always, new challenges for the Retail sector.  How should retailers invest hard-earned profits when it comes to technical roadmaps? What are the key retail technology trends emerging this year?

Like most fads crossing over from the US, Black Friday has made its way across the Atlantic and onto European shores. This US shopping phenomenon, which falls on the Friday after the Thanksgiving holiday is devoted to firing the metaphorical starting pistol for the retail industry’s busiest trading period of the year. Despite the absence of a formal holiday, this bargain hunting break has been adopted by UK retailers for around decade now.

Increasingly, the continuing health and wealth of organisations in the retail space is reliant on big data. There is a pressing need to not just analyse the information, but to appropriately leverage the wealth of business intelligence in order to manage customer expectations. This can be done by effectively extracting value from the information available and transforming this big data into big value.