| Global retailing conference reveals innovations Posted: Friday, Apr 07, 2006 - 02:31:33 pm MDT By Alaina G. Levine, Inside Tucson Business Customers want extra, better and more timely information to make their buying decisions, and Jan de Jong, retail industry manager for Microsoft Corporation, is helping companies oblige by developing cutting-edge technology to track and distribute retail intelligence in real time. Shopping malls are changing and improving as more online retailers are developing bricks-and-mortar stores, and Robert A. Michaels, president and COO of General Growth Properties, Inc., is there to assist in the transition. He is particularly excited about a new retail concept, in which consumers will be able to utilize online buying power within an actual shop to purchase branded items not available anywhere else. He describes the store, called Epicenter and slated to open in a General Growth property in 2007, as “the ultimate e-experience in a mall.” These innovations were just some of the ideas shared by a plethora of retailing industry leaders at the 11th Annual Global Retailing Conference, sponsored by the University of Arizona Terry J. Lundgren Center for Retailing, held March 30-31, at the Westin La Paloma Resort and Spa. Although this was the first time that Roy Chinn, a global director at Nestle Purina PetCare, had attended, he recognized the conference's benefits. “It's absolutely relevant to the biggest challenges I have to deal with, which is to create strategy for our global business,” he said. He also saw it as a “fertile field for recruiting the best and brightest for future leadership positions” at Purina, he said, as he accepted resumes from university retailing students. The conference featured speakers who addressed issues facing the world of retailing and offered solutions to challenges. Microsoft's de Jong works with retailing partners to develop software to meet the changing needs of both the companies and their clientele. A major issue in this arena is collecting information about actions within a retail environment, such as what customers are buying or what products are out of stock. The best information gathering we have now, said de Jong, involves onsite collection of sales data in a particular store, for example, which is then shipped overnight to be analyzed. “Store managers don't have the information on a daily basis,” according to de Jong, which means they are “losing one day or more” in terms of understanding what is happening inside their own store. Microsoft seeks to “make business information much more operational,” he said, with real-time analytics. For example, with the right software and hardware, a retail manager would know immediately if an item is out of stock and would be able to send this information in real-time to the warehouse or to the manufacturing division for an appropriate action to be taken. These technological innovations in retailing would “protect the revenue of clients,” said de Jong, and would make a significant impact in delivering goods and services, as well as information about the products, to customers faster. Gloria Johnson Goins, vice president of diversity and inclusion for The Home Depot, discussed employment trends in retail. Her presentation highlighted her company's innovations to recruit employees from specific population areas, including retirees, veterans, and Hispanics. Goins stressed that success in a retail environment clearly depends upon a “high-performance diverse workplace,” especially in edging out the competition, and that partnering with prominent organizations, such as AARP or the leading national Hispanic associations, is a strategic measure that companies must take. Alaina G. Levine is a freelance writer based in Tucson. Comments on this story may be sent to editor@azbiz.com . |