The End of PoS As We Know It

I have just been to the Apple Store with my daughter as she wanted to replace her broken smartphone. Can you guess what the person working there used to take a picture of the damage, bring up my customer data, take the credit card payment, and send the invoice to me by e-mail? He didn't use a camera, or a pen, or a traditional cash register, or a printer. That's right. He did it all on an iPad.

US retailer Urban Outfitters announced late last year that it had ordered its last ever cash register. The clothing chain declared it would start equipping sales staff with iPads instead. Many other retailers have also announced plans to phase out cash registers, including JCPenney, Aeropostale, Sam’s Club and Nordstrom. Others are likely to follow. Retailers have good reasons to eliminate cash registers says Gary Lombardo, Head of Marketing at Demandware. In fact, he believes that, at the current pace, mobile devices could replace cash registers in just a few years. Is this the end of PoS as we know it?

The Beginning of the End

Point-of-Sale (also known as 'Point of Service' or just ‘POS’) devices such as touch-screen displays, barcode scanners, receipts printers, scales and pole displays are slowly being forced out of the retail environment by the wide presence and capabilities of smartphones and tablets. The rise of online and mobile commerce has led retailers and POS technology providers to rethink how to best serve consumers.

Integration is one avenue. Due the potentially advantageous ROI and the worldwide exposure mobile platforms can provide, US developer and distributor POSmatic has come up with Onsight Point of Sale Software. Onsight offer SMEs a one-stop integrated solution to processing secure payments from “electronic signature capture pads, debit and credit card payments, web-enabled platforms, and smart interfaces.” Accepting mobile payments is rising in importance with retailers feeling the pinch of recession or simple loss of walk-in customers into their physical stores.

Apple devices are another option. Urban Outfitter’s CIO, Calvin Hollinger, said during a webcastpresentation in September 2012, that “iPads cost about 1/5th as much as a cash register, and can be used for so much.” Additional benefits of using iPads for retail transactions, according to Business Insider, include customer interaction, as they can enter their name, address and even telephone number and e-mail address easily and comfortably on an iPad. What’s more, “an iPad on a swivel that’s not in use can quickly be taken off, with that space being used for packing or more merchandise or anything else” says the article’s author Joe Weisenthal.

Dynamic Payment Processing

Mobile Strategy Partner’s David Eads argues new problems associated with managing multichannel shopping and measuring performance can be solved using mobile devices. Rather than upgrade POS equipment to serve mobile payments and NFC technology, Eads says smartphones and tablets offer a more dynamic way of handling all types of payment and monitoring sales across a range of channels.

IT company (and POS developer) Oracle’s David Dorf was (understandably) cautious about calling time on the point of sale as we know it. In a blog post from last year, Dorf wrote that, “in some situations, for some retailers there might be an opportunity to ditch the traditional POS, but for the majority of retailers that’s just not practical. Self-checkout is a great addition to POS and so is mobile checkout,” he argues. “But they add capabilities to POS, not replace it. Centralized architectures, even those based in the cloud, are quite viable as long as there’s resiliency in the registers.”

Whether PoS is enhanced by mobile devices such as smartophones and tablets, or replaced altogether, what is sure is that our shopping experience is set to change forever with the advent of mobile commerce.

Do you agree with that vision? Share your thoughts below.

Posted by Herwig Stockl on 19 Apr, 2013

Source : Ericsson

Why Small Data may Be Bigger than Big Data

Forget punch cards. How smart businesses can connect with customers to create loyalty.

In start-up land, the hot buzzword is Big Data--those massive data sets that can't be handled with traditional database tools. The promise is that businesses can capture, curate, and synthesize big data to enable personalization in e-commerce, smarter business decisions, and greater efficiency.

In the world of local businesses, we're not talking about big data. Instead we're dealing with Small Data.

Make no mistake, small does not mean insignificant. Think of it this way: If we leveraged data in local the same way large e-commerce companies do, we could have a greater impact on commerce than Big Data, since more than 90 percent of retail transactions still occur offline in local businesses. But most of us don’t. The reality is that most local businesses haven’t figured out how to capture or use this data to grow profits. So how do we solve the "data divide" for local businesses?

If you are an e-commerce company, it’s a straightforward exercise to use Google Analytics to see how many customers are visiting your website daily, how many are repeat visitors, and how long they spend on your site. But if you're a local business with a physical store, it’s a lot harder. Large multi-store chains can hire people to count traffic by hand or leverage new technologies that use cameras or mobile phone signals to estimate traffic, but smaller local businesses have been left out--until recently.

Forget paper punch cards for repeat visitors. Today’s cards are digital and link to your customer database. Modern loyalty programs--enabled by technology called loyalty automation--do at least three things in the area of data: capture identity, connect identity to activity, and drive personalization. That’s exactly what big businesses have been doing for years. Here’s how it works.

• Capture Identity. In the world of paper punch cards, you could drive loyalty, but you couldn't capture identity. You didn't know which people were coming to your store each month. With modern loyalty programs, local businesses can finally connect a store visitor with a real person's identity, since at signup, their identity is registered in a database that’s integrated with their point-of-sale. Then when they come back to the store with their loyalty card, businesses know their name.   
• Connect Identity to Activity. Since customers are no longer anonymous visitors and bring their identity with them, local businesses can now connect customers to specific activity--whether that's visiting their store frequently or purchasing particular products. 
• Drive Personalization. Because they now know which customers come frequently, which ones have stopped coming, and which ones prefer particular items, businesses can customize their treatment of these customers. They can make their best customers even more loyal by treating them as such and win back the ones who have stopped coming. 

One great example is The Real Deli, a small deli store in Dana Point, California, which leverages data and tools from its modern loyalty program to figure out who visits frequently and regularly opens their emails. They call these customers “super fans,” since they can be The Real Deli’s greatest word-of-mouth advocates. They give them special offers and VIP treatment and rely on them to spread the word about their business. This simple tactic of matching store visits with email activity--something e-commerce companies do on a regular basis--had previously been impossible for local businesses.

The Real Deli may have crossed the data divide. If other local businesses can join, the potential gains in personalization, sales, and efficiency with Small Data could be just as staggering as that of Big Data. 

Source : Inc., 1/04/13, Voctor Ho

Victor Ho is the CEO and Co-Founder of FiveStars, a venture-backed startup building the first loyalty automation platform for local businesses. Previously, he was a consultant at McKinsey & Co. in New York, where he helped multiple Fortune 500 companies build and manage their loyalty and customer retention programs. Victor holds three degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and is a Rubik’s cube enthusiast with a personal best of 45 seconds. @FiveStarsCard

Renaissance Factoy, spécialiste de la relance de sites marchands en difficultés

Françoise Govare, dirigeante de Renaissance Factory© S. de P. Renaissance Factory

Après avoir levé 270 000 euros auprès de Kima Ventures, OTC et Angyal, le spécialiste de la relance de sites marchands en difficultés dévoile son business model. 

JDN. Renaissance Factory se positionne comme un "accélérateur de business". De quoi s'agit-il ?
Françoise Govare. Nous sommes un accélérateur de business pour des sites marchands dans le sens où notre structure leur permet de mutualiser coûts et compétences afin de les relancer et de leur donner un second souffle. Notre modèle se base sur des acquisitions de sites positionnés sur des niches, dans l'univers de la maison, du textile, de la mode voire des services d'e-commerce par abonnement. Dès la première année, nous souhaitons les amener au million d'euros de volume d'affaires. Notre démarche n'est cependant pas agressive dans le sens où nous sommes bien accueillis par les dirigeants de sites marchands. Ils savent que nous sommes là pour les aider.
  Comment sélectionnez-vous les sites que vous comptez racheter ?
Nous faisons une due-diligence au préalable, au cours de laquelle nous étudions leur concept, les leviers de croissance et les synergies que nous pouvons trouver avec les entrepreneurs. Nous essayons avec eux de développer un business plan le plus détaillé possible. En ce qui concerne la taille des structures, nous ne regardons que ceux qui ont eu une réelle expérience sur leur marché, c'est-à-dire des sociétés qui ont une activité opérationnelle d'une durée de six mois à un an et demi.

Quelle est votre stratégie pour relancer un site marchand ?
Nous nous interrogeons dans un premier temps sur la viabilité deson positionnement afin de lui trouver les meilleurs leviers de croissance. Puis nous réévaluons et ajustons ses besoins marketing et déployons ses campagnes en faisant fonctionner tous les leviers d'acquisitions client traditionnels, qu'il s'agisse du SEO, SEM, d'affiliation et des comparateurs de prix. Enfin nous avons accès à une plateforme et un ERP souple fait-maison qui nous permet de gérer du Magento, du Prestashop et même du RBS.

Vous parlez d'un modèle de développement low-cost...

"Notre objectif est de miser sur d'importantes économies d'échelle"

Notre objectif est de miser sur d'importantes économies d'échelle, par exemple grâce à une base de données que nous allons mutualiser et segmenter pour optimiser nos performances en matière d'emailing. La valeur ajoutée est également permise grâce aux compétences de notre équipe et de sa capacité d'exécution. Ainsi, nous allons pouvoir racheter deux à quatre sites marchands par an pour les relancer.

Qu'en est-il de votre prise de participation ? Quels sont vos objectifs de cession ?

"Nous visons une valorisation de 1 à 3 millions d'euros pour les sites après 3 à 5 ans"

On ne prend pas forcément 100% du capital des sociétés mais nous montons au moins à 51% pour conserver une marge de manœuvre. A ce moment leur valorisation n'est pas importante et notre rôle sera de leur permettre d'atteindre une valorisation de 1 à 3 millions d'euros après 3 à 5 ans. Nous avons un projet de cession du même ordre de durée pour chaque site. Les futurs acquéreurs peuvent être autant des e-commerçants déjà installés sur le marché que des industriels intéressés par la perspective de diversifier leur activité grâce à des verticaux de niche pertinents.

Que se passera-t-il pour les équipes en cas de cession ?
La situation ne s'est pas encore présentée. Nous avons jusque-là uniquement racheté un spécialiste du linge de maison baptisé Cosyforyou et sa fondatrice Aurélia Denoual nous a rejoints pour participer à l'aventure Renaissance Factory. Le jour où nous revendrons une activité, nous étudierons les offres au cas par cas et s'il faut accompagner les acquéreurs, un moment, nous pourrons le faire. Si, en interne, le repreneur est intéressé par certaines de nos ressources, tout est envisageable.

Diplômée de l'ESCP Europe en marketing international, Françoise Govare débute sa carrière dans la grande consommation en 1980 où elle passe chez Jacques Vabre, Danone et L'Oréal. En 1995, elle rejoint Prisunic puis Sephora avant de se spécialiser dans le luxe chez Baume et Mercier. Elle devient consultante indépendance en grande distribution en 2004 où elle se spécialise dans le mode et les cosmétiques. En 2010, elle devient directrice marketing du groupe marocain Aksal. Elle fonde Renaissance Factory en 2012 avec Aurélia Denoual (directrice marketing) Jean-Sébastien Grainzevelles (directeur des opérations) et Phetdavanh Sisombath (directeur technique). La structure a été fondée avec le soutien de Martin Génot (AchatVIP, Network Finance).

Source : Journal du Net