The Retail sector has often been an innovator. Take the digitisation of product data through the use of barcodes. Prosaic little graphics which we all simply take for granted today, Retail barcode usage began in the mid 1970’s and revolutionised many aspects of how goods were manufactured, dispatched, tracked and sold. 

Customer centricity is a trending topic for many industries. Market analysts view this as being critical to ensuring business survival and not just an approach to achieve some competitive advantage. But what is true customer centricity and what makes one business more customer-centric than another? The answer to this hinges on the extent to which a retailer has aligned its business model and operations to the wants and needs of the consumer.

Reducing store staff to decrease costs might be the instinctive response of many retailers in the light of the recent directive to introduce the national living wage. However; this could be counterproductive says Dan Murphy from management consultancy, Kurt Salmon; in a recent RetailWeek article.

Our retail trend for May is not a new or innovative idea. Rather, it is an evolution of the oldest and most common retail focus – thinking more like the customer. Except that today, multi-channel customer engagement requires different thinking. It necessitates strategies to gather customer insight based upon their random purchasing patterns. These consumers demand a seamless shopping experience, proving difficult to pigeon-hole into traditional demographic buying groups.

It’s interesting when the untraditional take on the very traditional retail sector keeps repeating itself with aplomb. Throughout 2016 we’ve been identifying and publishing key retail tech trends on our retail blog. We’ve observed several themes repeat themselves month on month. Nevertheless, the opportunity to gain competitive advantage through the use of trending technologies has catapulted this industry into the limelight.

An early Easter a shorter than usual period between the Christmas trading rush and the traditional start of spring here in the northern hemisphere.  And, once again we’ve been monitoring the latest trends in Retail technology and highlighting what has gained the most momentum over the past month.  So, here goes:

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?

The Retail Sector is leading the way in educating and creating user expectations in digital; however the Government must keep up.

Last Tuesday, we were fortunate enough to be joined by guest speaker Phil Pavitt, former HMRC CIO and now Global CIO at Specsavers, who discussed the lessons the Public Sector can learn from retailers in embracing Digital.

Here we discover 8 pieces of advice that can be incorporated to the Public Sector:

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.