Retail Automation in 2010: What Needs to Be Done to Operate Successfully?
In yesterday's webcast, we provided a sneak-peek into the data from our 2010 Retail & Transaction Automation Equipment Business Planning Service.
The webcast was recorded and the slides can be found below. We encourage you to review both to get a good high-level picture of the current state of the traditional and next-gen retail and transaction automation markets, and how customer experiences with multiple technologies are aiding, or hindering, retail automation supplier efforts to gain traction in this turbulent market.
To quickly summarize some of what we covered, we thought we'd use this platform to share how retail automation suppliers can operate successfully, given the still-turbulent state of retail today.
- Recognize and leverage your strengths – above your brand – in alignment with the common key product and vendor selection criteria including: reliability, durability, product quality, price and ease of use.
- Be specific, differentiated and relevant when it comes to your product(s) because brand matters less than ever when it comes to product selection – and customer requirements differ materially across certain product class boundaries.
- Promote ROI. Adoption in every product category is being hindered because of fuzzy ROI.
- Take on the integration / compatibility challenges by thinking about new product opportunities or brand-worthy opportunities.
- Develop your communications/ network management capabilities, both wireline and wireless, as it addresses the acute challenges of integration and compatibility.
- Study how some of the differences in requirements and preferences across technical segments can be as powerful as the differences across vertical segments.