Everyone is changing their user interface these days"”even new automobiles have touch screens rather than buttons. However, not all UIs are created equal. Some of them are just pretty faces.
Retailers have been faced with big challenges, including the emergence of smartphone shopping and the continued e-commerce boom. It is no secret that today's e-commerce shoppers now expect to receive items quickly. Since retailers frequently offer comparable products at similar prices, speed of delivery is becoming an increasingly important factor for many online shoppers. This puts tremendous pressure on warehouse operators.
For their global innovation strategies, many companies have long relied on their ability to assemble people with key capabilities and critical knowledge. They typically do this through co-location: bringing together designers, engineers, technologists, and other creative thinkers in a few innovation centers at home and in lead markets. The new products and services they create are then disseminated to markets across the world. But as the range of knowledge needed for global innovation becomes wider and more varied, co-location is no longer sufficient.
Symphony EYC, a player in retail and distribution improvement software formerly known as Aldata, announced that its second U.S. holiday shopping survey has determined that in the United States shoppers want to use their mobile phones to make shopping easier, more personalized, and to have more control over inventory, but that purchasing groceries with a mobile is still in its infancy.
The first to arrive in a market is often the one who ends up owning the dominating market share. But simply recognizing a trend is too little, too late. There will already be a line of other manufacturers who have the new customized product, flexible supply chain and tailored pricing structure in place.
The use of highly scaled, shared, and automated IT platforms"”known as cloud computing"”is growing rapidly. Adopters are driven by the prospects of increasing agility and gaining access to more computing resources for less money. Large institutions are building and managing private-cloud environments internally (and, in some cases, procuring access to external public clouds) for basic infrastructure services, development platforms, and whole applications. Smaller businesses are primarily buying public-cloud offerings, as they generally lack the scale to set up their own clouds. But as attractive as cloud environments can be, they also come with new types of risks.