Drawing on one of the biggest Research and Development centres in the world (Adastral Park), our showcase will be crammed full of the very latest retail technology, from digital signage and social commerce to clienteling and mobile point of sale.

You often see the “future of retail” at these events and are left scratching your head as to how exactly it will work. That’s why we’ll have real working demos of everything on show.

Because it’s not about some fantasy future – the products and services we’re demoing are based on current trends, things that are bubbling under the surface now. And products and services we’re putting into place right now.

Make no bones about it – technology is changing the way we shop.

Take mobile, for example. With smartphone wielding, product savvy customers setting the agenda, retailers need to arm their sale staff with access to the same info. That means in-store wi-fi and mobile devices.

But sexy in-store iPads won’t produce any results if the infrastructure underpinning all of it isn’t right. That’s why the future of retail is all about the plumbing – or wiring if you prefer.

This might not be as exciting as tablet devices and interactive signage, but it’s the fundamental stuff that will make or break your multichannel approach. Having customer and stock data at your fingertips will help you understand your customers and be able to personalise the shopping experience.

So as well as all the neat gizmos and gadgets to dazzle customers, we can make sure that everything works together – that all the disparate channels come together in one integrated system. As well as removing the complexity – we can host everything remotely so your bandwidth can flex up and down as you need it – this will also help remove cost from your business.

So if you’re not already registered for the Expo, do it now. And if you are coming along, get in touch to request a tailored tour of our technology showcase. It’s definitely worth booking this in advance so that you get the most out of your visit.

My favourite town, my favourite show. New York’s National Retail Federation (NRF) 2012 conference theme was Retail’s New Rules, and it focused on how retailers and innovators are reshaping the conventional rules of the game.

It was bigger, better and busier than ever, with 400 exhibitors and over 25,000 attendees from 78 countries. And Bill Clinton headlining! And, for me, this year’s big ideas were:

Consumer reigns
Epicor’s booth showed that consumer devices reign supreme: Business Intelligence (BI) portals, assisted service, clienteling – all served up on shiny tablet devices. Equally exciting, was acceptance that customer engagement rules are changing and in response to this, our newly launched Clienteling app attracted lots of attention around the show.

‘Omni-commerce’
At the conference, I asked US retailers for their views on the subject of centrally hosted versus distributed POS systems. In previous years, US retailers have shown little interest in this deployment model, in stark contrast to their UK counterparts.
But this year there was a definite shift in attitude; among the IT attendees, the key words were resilience, virtualisation and security. And their Business and Marketing colleague’s phrases like ‘customer experience’ and ‘cross-channel’ – or the new buzz phrase at the show – ‘omni-commerce’.

Maximum security
Overlaid on top of the cloud, security and PCI were also major themes. Network vendors promising the ‘elixir to PCI’ were around every corner; secure networks, secure wi-fi, secure platforms.

Clicks and mortar
A different perspective on Payment was provided by PayPal, whose booth was drawing in the crowds with their cross-channel vision and inexorable push into ‘bricks and mortar’. It’s part of a process that’s moving payment from the wallet to the smartphone, with personalised pricing and promotions, while consumers shop. PayPal’s new strapline ‘Now the Best in Both Worlds’ shows Great vision in a fast moving area. Watch this space!

My summary of this year’s show: Bigger than ever, lots of optimism. Technology is where it’s at. Not just technology to meet the fast moving shopping habits of consumers, but technology that supports global reach, because that’s where the growth is. By the end of the show I was exhausted but more enthused about the future of retail and the systems that underpin it than previous years. Roll on 2012.

Steve Thomas, CTO, BT Expedite

Back in September 2011 we were eagerly awaiting the clarification from the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) on Point to Point Encryption (P2PE). At the time I asked whether it was time to get off the fence and set out a white paper outlining the potential benefits of implementing such a solution. Now that the clarification has been published it’s clear that our assumptions remain valid and the approach, assuming that you use a solution which includes external hosting, will make compliance easier for most. But is there perhaps a sting in the tail?

First we have to wait until the QSA training is completed. Then there is the further wait for solutions to be validated. Combine this with the need for most Chip and PIN retailers to complete a PIN entry device (PED) replacement programme and we might have an issue with timing – and then supply and demand.

QSA training expected to slip
 
Initially there was a belief that QSA training would be completed by March 2012, but this is expected to slip. And the number of QSAs who will be trained and certified to complete the solution validation is likely to be a subset of the total QSA community. If we assume that the validation process takes three months, which may be optimistic, then we could be looking at July or August before any certified solutions are formally available to implement.

If retailers wait for the listing to be published then their selection of a new solution is unlikely to be completed until October 2012 at the earliest, giving no time at all to implement the solution before the end of the year (unless you ignore the traditional Christmas freeze). Some might think that this is a pessimistic view, but even if you take the best case it’s unlikely that you can start a change programme before August.
 
Five key planning steps

So let’s take the optimistic view. In August you sit down to start planning the implementation of a P2PE solution. Here’s what you need to think about:

1. PED replacement – this goes hand in hand with the P2PE solution. Remember you’ll be limited to selecting a terminal which conforms to PCI-PTS version 3.x (this is not a long list in the UK or Eire).
2. Accreditation with your acquirer(s) – not all solutions are pre-accredited and, if you need to go through an accreditation, your plan will have to include this, which could easily add 12 weeks (assuming you don’t have to wait too long for a slot).
3. PED availability – demand will increase as the year progresses, lead times will therefore likely extend.
4. Integration – most P2PE solutions will need to be integrated with your POS. Do not lose sight of the effort that this will take in terms of development, testing and implementation.
5. Deployment – new PEDs will mean engineering visits and P2PE applications will require software upgrades.

Clearly timelines will vary and you’ll likely have a view on the considerations above. But if P2PE is your answer to solving your PCI DSS challenges then, as I said back in September 2011 – PLAN NOW. Get your budget in place and perhaps take a calculated gamble to start sooner rather than later. If you wait you might find that it leads to disappointment, with busy development and deployment teams, and long lead times on PEDs, not to mention stretched resources at the acquirers trying to deal with a host of accreditations in parallel.
 
You might find it useful to look at our Time to get off the fence? whitepaper to help with your planning or get in touch to discuss how BT might help.
 
Kevin Burns
PCI DSS consultant
BT Expedite

Predictions from some commentators that Christmas Day would be more popular than Boxing Day (when post-Christmas sales are officially launched) were dumbfounded, with 26 December continuing to be the most popular post-Christmas shopping day.

We work with a whole host of retailers, having created online stores for leading fashion and lifestyle brands such as Coast, Great Little Trading Company, Habitat, Jane Norman, JJB Sports, Karen Millen, Matalan, Matches Fashion, Oasis, The Perfume Shop, Snow+Rock, Thomas Pink, TJ Hughes and Warehouse.

This was a record breaking Christmas period with the highest ever weekly, daily and hourly traffic volumes and transactions, as shoppers took full advantage of promotional activity. The two week period at the end of November and the beginning of December was considerably busier than the pronounced spike experienced in 2010. This Christmas also saw a growing trend for ‘early week’ shopping with Sunday evenings and Mondays being particularly busy. Another trend is the increasing use of ‘flash sales’ to drive traffic.

2011 showed a differing trend to previous years with a number of peaks in orders volumes as opposed to just one. It’s also interesting that the week leading up to Christmas, historically a ‘no-go’ for online retailers, is now coming into its own. Even at 20 December, there were still high order volumes, at least as high as the beginning of November, in part due to sharpened delivery strategies, giving customers confidence their orders will arrive before the big day.

While total order numbers have grown in 2011, average values of orders have dipped for many retailers, reflecting the high levels of promotional activity and re-enforcing the trend that more and more value retailers are moving online and promoting this channel to their customers.

Whether or not people were striking or working from home or simply unable to get to work because of the industrial action it seems many decided November 30 was a good time to do their Christmas shopping online.

Compared to Christmas 2010, Christmas 2011 represented Year on Year (YoY) changes in:

• Order Volume of +46%

• Order Value of +20%

• Average Order Value of -18%

Compared with last year, 2011 represented Year on Year (YoY) changes in:

• Order Volume of +58%

• Order Value of +32%

• Average Order Value of -17%

Written by Richard Vining, Head of FCP Performance

Our customers will get to hear more from Richard at our next client conference but he’s a big fan of social media and you follow him @richard_m_dodd or via LinkedIn.

Richard Dodd, CEO, BT Expedite & Fresca

1) Click & collect boosts on-line orders by at least 10% with some retailers achieving >30% uplift.  This is incremental to year-on-year increases in web sales typically in excess of 20%  

2)  Best in class retailers are seeing >60% upsell once a customer is in-store to collect their order

3)  Transactions through Mobile and Social touchpoints, whilst still low, are increasing at an exponential rate.

These are hard benefits, there are many soft benefits of this cross-channel retail approach including improved customer loyalty and increased staff engagement.  You can find out a little bit more directly from our customers Meg Lustman, MD from Warehouse and Jonathan Heilbron, CEO from Thomas Pink in the video below:

    Click on the video at any point during play to submit an enquiry 

Article by Jason Shorrock, Multichannel Consultant, BT Expedite

1. E-commerce doesn’t cover the half of it
It’s not just e-commerce anymore. In a really short space of time, we’ve gone from e-commerce to multichannel to cross-channel to merged channels to… what? Forrester suggests “agile commerce” as a catch-all for the rest of the alphabet (including, e- m- and F- commerce).
In joining up the channels, it seems e-commerce will exist as a separate discipline in a few years. But what does that actually mean for retailers?
Phil Heaton from relative newcomers Getthelabel.com, talked about creating an online business and building it up to a market leader in just three years.

Phillip Heaton, Getthelabel.com, presenting at the Next Generation Event, BT Tower

 
In that short space of time, he’s been astounded by the changes: “Customer expectations around delivery, for example, have changed dramatically since we began. We had what could be considered an appropriate delivery model for our business at the time, but with 90-minute fulfilment and tailored timeslots around now, we know we have to change to meet current expectations.”
 

2. We will never get “there”
The two most-used words at the event were e-commerce and journey.  But a journey suggests a destination, unless you’re in e-commerce. Sarah Hughes joint MD at BT Fresca set the scene for the day:  “We’re on a journey,” she said, “and we’ll never be nearly there.”
 

Sarah Hughes, BT Fresca, speaking at the Next Generation ecommerce event, BT Tower

Sound a bit daunting? Not according to Nadine Sharara, e-commerce director at Thomas Pink. Echoing the views of many in the audience, Nadine spoke enthusiastically and energetically about the never ending e-commerce journey. “I think about it, not so much as a journey,” she explained, “than as a travel experience.”
Nadine introduced the latest Thomas Pink on-site product videos and explained how these were now driving the in-store experience. And the products featured on the videos are flying off the shelves, both real and virtual, proving that a more engaging e-commerce experience is more than just cool eye candy.

Nadine Sharara, Thomas Pink, presenting at the Next Generation ecommerce event, BT Tower

 
The stats show that retailers who grasp this idea of an ongoing journey do better than those who get everything in place and sit back. “Your e-commerce investment needs tending,” says BT Fresca’s multichannel specialist Jason Shorrock, “you have to feed and water it.”

What else did we learn?
Most innovation in e-commerce is focused on channel integration and fulfilment. So ensuring that web orders can be picked up in store (offering an opportunity to up-sell) and integration with social channels, like Facebook, are essential.

Click and collect has been the kiss of life for the High Street. Almost all retailers have a transactional website. But retailers without a store footprint (even just a couple of flagships) look a little old fashioned. And multichannel retailers are faring better than pureplays in general.
This is a huge opportunity for multichannel retailers to fight back against pure e-commerce providers as they can provide better service, instant gratification and increasingly flexible delivery options. One of the best examples of this is Oasis, which offers a 90-minute delivery from store.
So e-commerce is just the beginning. Mix in a little multimedia, in-store wi-fi and social networking, sprinkle in some smart handheld devices and you’re there. Well, nearly there. For the moment…

Find out more about ecommerce & online marketing solutions from BT Expedite

We constantly strive to help our customers, help their customers, but this week we’ve been especially hard at work playing Santa’s little helper to make the Christmas rush easier for everyone.  The new mobile optimised Snow+Rock website has just gone live, making it easier for shoppers to place orders and browse on the go – fantastic if your planning to hit the slopes, or for last minute gift shopping and catching those bargains as soon as they hit the sales. 

Around the globe, the Fresca fairies are busy sprinkling their e-commerce magic, already providing websites for Karen Millen, Oasis, Warehouse and Coast for the last five years in the UK and more recently going web optimised.  We’ve now pushed them global launching the Karen Millen website in Germany as well as a joint website for Oasis, Warehouse and Coast where customers can shop across the brands all in one site!

Both sites are in local language that support local fulfilment, promotions, payment and customer service tailored for each specific country, and Aurora plan to roll out our platform across even more countries.  The web sites will support local payment types such as direct bank transfer and invoice on delivery, and the capacity to manage fulfilment from a local distribution centre.

The Frescacommerce Platform is behind many of the world’s fastest growing and most successful e-commerce web sites. It aims to blend creativity with e-commerce best practice and to integrate back office functions like customer ordering, call centre and fulfilment, to maximise sales while giving customers an engaging online experience.

Hash Ladha, Aurora’s group multichannel director, said: “We are very impressed by the current FrescaCommerce Platform and BT’s development plans for the future. These will help underpin our own plans for growth in Europe, Asia-Pacific and beyond.”

We are very excited about these new sites going live and wish our customers all the best for the Christmas trading period.

Resting on the old-fashioned cliff-side are some relatively recent retailers, ASOS (founded in 2000),  eBay (1995) together with an analog and digital media pioneer, HMV (1899). Staking claim to the new ground are traditional high street names such as Burberry (1856), Thomas Pink (1984),  Aurora Fashions (Coast, 1996; Oasis, 1991 & Warehouse, 1976) mixed in with the cream of social networking Facebook (2004) and a revolutionary delivery company, Shutl (2008).

What sets them apart? A true appreciation of their customers’ multichannel lives.

For example, yesterday ex-ASOS visionary Hash Ladha, now 18 months in as multichannel director at Aurora Fashions announced the latest tranche of UK cities to be covered by his fashion industry leading 90 minute delivery service. By February 2012, 90% of the UK can order a dress late afternoon and be wearing it the same evening. Why does this make pure-play retailers like ASOS look old? Because ASOS do not have the nationwide store coverage to support this type of ship from store to home service. Nick Robertson, ASOS CEO, has long muted the possibility of a single ASOS store on Oxford Street, but even that’s a long way from the 50 or so stores required for pan-UK coverage.

The retail equivalent of Apple, Burberry’s recent tie-up with Salesforce.com underlines the absolute need to focus on your customer wherever she happens to be. In the same vein, presenting creative innovation yesterday, Nadine Sharara, e-commerce director at Thomas Pink, underscored the need for absolute quality and consistency of brand regardless of channel. The beautifully British Brideshead revisited theme of this years A/W campaign oozes the kind of high end luxury that thrives in the harshest recession. And the execution from store through to on-line is truly multichannel.

Of the keynotes that kicked off the conference yesterday, eBay sounded tired as it talked up its outlet channels and social media heritage. Conversely, head of Facebook commerce partnerships, Gavin Sathianathan, is effortlessly cool and unceasingly innovative as he describes the stories of the 800 million people that make up the Facebook world and the opportunities for retailers to join them.

So if e-commerce sounded old yesterday, true multichannel retailers are fresher than ever, buoyed by their years of trading and customer focus.

Gerald Maidment, Account Director