The latest figures from the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index reveal that snow and rain this April seem to have encouraged online shoppers to spend nearly £326 million on clothes and online footwear sales saw a significant growth in sales of 20 per cent. These figures drew a sharp contrast to sales on the High Street, with the British Retail Consortium reporting that clothing and footwear fell further to their worst for at least eight years. This trend was further backed by the figures in July 2007 – the clothing, footwear and accessories sector shot up by 85 per cent to over £90 million during the week of 16 July 2007 when the UK experienced torrential downpours, hail and thunder. The country also saw flood warnings this same week and the Index reported a dramatic increase in online sales for footwear of 165.

Shoppers will be invited to access an online survey through a URL printed on their receipts. The beauty products retailer says that the solution will provide customer experience data that is higher quality and more quantitative than the mystery shopper program data it will supplement.

"We spoke to Medallia reference clients, including globally recognised retail leaders. They universally praised the solution. It confirmed for us not only the superiority of their system but also the value of putting in place such a state-of-the-art customer feedback solution,” says Kahla Broussard, vice president of retail at Sephora. “Empowering the store managers with the level of customer satisfaction data Medallia provides will help us create unique shopping experiences for all of our clients."

The New Future In Store study, issued by market information and insight group, TNS, surveyed 4,600 primary household shoppers online in eight countries – Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, UK and US – and asked them to comment on 12 innovations. Findings include: 41 per cent of consumers see biometric fingerprint payment as having ‘high appeal’ – rising to 60 per cent in China but falling to 24 per cent in Germany; Whilst 73 per cent expect interactive dressing room assistance to be in place by 2015, just 23 per cent would be likely to use this; US consumers were most keen on ‘smart’ shopping trolleys – 28 per cent ranking it top vs. just nine per cent in France and Germany; 3D body scanning is most popular amongst Germans (21 per cent) compared to an average of 12 per cent; 59 per cent of Chinese consumers rank a holographic sales assistants as their top innovation – whilst Japanese and British like this least, at 15 per cent.

To maximise footfall at the selected stores in which the fragrance was launched, Diesel wanted to exploit the latest technology to create a dramatic impact, maximising the visibility of the new product and bringing promotional messages to life for shoppers passing by. Two 103” plasma screens were installed at flagship Boots stores in London and Manchester and video and audio to tie in with a nationwide TV and print campaign for the perfume launch were projected on the screens.

Research from Gartner has found that few sites have taken advantage of new technologies to improve usability, interactivity and navigation. However, successful e-commerce operations have invested continually in upgrades to their sites, with many of these improvements running off the Ajax platform. “Many people say that they don't enjoy shopping on the web because it's often difficult to find products they want, prices and shipping costs can be hard to calculate, and check-out often is frustrating and time-consuming,” says Gene Alvarez, research vice president at Gartner. “Our research finds that many e-commerce customers are not repeat visitors. E-commerce sites have one shot to win over buyers - first impressions count. If the site doesn't win the first time, then it usually won't draw customers back, unless the company offers promotions or discounts, or customers are compelled to return.”

The latest figures from the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index reveal that snow and rain this April seem to have encouraged online shoppers to spend nearly £326 million on clothes and online footwear sales saw a significant growth in sales of 20 per cent. These figures drew a sharp contrast to sales on the High Street, with the British Retail Consortium reporting that clothing and footwear fell further to their worst for at least eight years. This trend was further backed by the figures in July 2007 – the clothing, footwear and accessories sector shot up by 85 per cent to over £90 million during the week of 16 July 2007 when the UK experienced torrential downpours, hail and thunder. The country also saw flood warnings this same week and the Index reported a dramatic increase in online sales for footwear of 165.

Shoppers will be invited to access an online survey through a URL printed on their receipts. The beauty products retailer says that the solution will provide customer experience data that is higher quality and more quantitative than the mystery shopper program data it will supplement.

"We spoke to Medallia reference clients, including globally recognised retail leaders. They universally praised the solution. It confirmed for us not only the superiority of their system but also the value of putting in place such a state-of-the-art customer feedback solution,” says Kahla Broussard, vice president of retail at Sephora. “Empowering the store managers with the level of customer satisfaction data Medallia provides will help us create unique shopping experiences for all of our clients."

The New Future In Store study, issued by market information and insight group, TNS, surveyed 4,600 primary household shoppers online in eight countries – Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, UK and US – and asked them to comment on 12 innovations. Findings include: 41 per cent of consumers see biometric fingerprint payment as having ‘high appeal’ – rising to 60 per cent in China but falling to 24 per cent in Germany; Whilst 73 per cent expect interactive dressing room assistance to be in place by 2015, just 23 per cent would be likely to use this; US consumers were most keen on ‘smart’ shopping trolleys – 28 per cent ranking it top vs. just nine per cent in France and Germany; 3D body scanning is most popular amongst Germans (21 per cent) compared to an average of 12 per cent; 59 per cent of Chinese consumers rank a holographic sales assistants as their top innovation – whilst Japanese and British like this least, at 15 per cent.

Looking to improve customer service in the mobile phone industry, Phones 4u called on the customer engagement specialist to provide an effective way to listen to and engage with their customers via SMS. Jim Slater, director of marketing and CRM at Phones 4u, comments: “Fizzback provides us with vital insight into the mood of the customer base and how our stores are driving satisfaction and advocacy. We view it as an essential component of our customer management strategy.”

The system produces accurate staff schedules for each store, as well as helping them with attendance management and assists with the labour budgeting process. “We knew that if we could get a better match between our staff and our customer requirements this would make a significant contribution to our performance,” says Craig Pickett, stores productivity manager at the home improvement retailer.

Wickes chose WorkPlace Systems to provide the Workforce Management system and engaged LSI Consulting to review all store processes, produce a set of labour standards and develop an accurate operating model. This enabled the Workforce Management system to generate an accurate forecast of workload demand. As part of the project, LSI was also required to review, streamline and document all store processes, including customer service and management activities and subsequently produce standard timings for all activities.

Great Guns replaces Instrument in providing brand content for the system. Development, management and sales of Tesco Screens, formerly known as Tesco TV, were transferred to dunnhumby in August 2006. It redeveloped the proposition to make it more tailored and complement in-store messages, bringing above-the-line campaigns to life in-store. The network comprises plasma and LCD screens in 100 Tesco Superstores and Extras, with a footfall of six million shoppers every month. Content for the network is divided into seven in-store zones, including Health & Beauty, Home Entertainments and Beers, Wines and Spirits.

Over the next three months, Autotime’s technicians will work closely with the supermarket chain’s IT Infrastructure team to enhance the hardware throughout all 375 UK stores. The principle aim of the project is to provide a single standardised time and attendance solution used across all Morrisons sites nationwide.

The software will be used across all channels, including retail, web, franchise and party plan, for the Ann Summers and Knickerbox brands. The first stage of the planning implementation will go live at the end of May 2008. It will then be rolled out across the business, with the final stages of implementation set for August. The module will enable Ann Summers’ head office to integrate store planning into its buying requirements, increasing efficiency, and providing an accurate reporting tool. Prior to the IP Planning Module installation, the company operated from an Excel-based system, which supports its planning and merchandising activity. Tony Indyk, commercial director at Ann Summers, comments: “We spend 80 per cent of our time collating merchandising information, and 20 per cent analysing the data output via our current system. With the new planning tool, we would anticipate that the time spent on these activities will switch, and as a result we will be able to more efficiently plan across all levels, including channel, location, product and time (weekly or monthly), pre-season and in-season.”

The chosen EPOS platform is to be the InControl system, which has been developed by the retailer’s own IT team, and is currently installed in around 1,650 Group food stores and will be rolled out to 550 former United food stores during 2008. This follows a successful pilot in a number of stores to confirm the suitability of the hardware, software and training package. The Group expects that around 20 food stores a week will be upgraded from March. The system consists of touchscreen tills with customer-facing advertising screen, a fully-integrated chip and PIN system, a stock and order replenishment system generating orders that go to Co-operative warehouses and direct suppliers and wireless technology within stores for printing labels and price checking.

The software can be 'taught' to understand text language, pigeon English and regional dialects and phrases and text speak. "We see a lot of 'respelling' which people use in their email to give emphasis or accent to words - they're the kind of things that are easily distinguished in speech but difficult to express in written form,” says Tim Easton, director at Numero. "The respelling of 'please' to indicate emphatic or sarcastic pronunciation has become common place and well established enough to warrant inclusion in SmartAgent's lexicon as 'puh-leeze' - and other variations of that spelling.”

The home furnishing retailer will use Bond Talent to manage all of its recruitment processes electronically – eliminating existing manual and email-based systems – to provide secure access to its business partners and line managers who manage more than 4,500 job applicants annually. Improving the system will result in an estimated saving of £60,000, together with significant increases in efficiency, speed of operation and time savings.

Through using Commidea’s Ocius chip and PIN solution with contactless technology, the sandwich, soup and coffee shop will now be able to process both Visa (Paywave) and MasterCard (Paypass) transactions for its customers using Barclaycard Business as their merchant provider. It will now be able to offer its customers a method of payment on all transactions of £10 and under. With 350,000 customers per week and an average transaction value of less than £5, the company says that it is ideally positioned to benefit from the technology.

As a result, customers will be able to choose to reserve online and collect in-store, in addition to the traditional method of ordering online for home delivery. The retailer approached JTM Partners to create the look and feel of the new checkout, and Salmon to develop the schematics and functional dynamic pages using CSS, XHTML and J2EE. It reports that 100,000 orders were taken online from November 2007 through to January 2008, prior to the national roll-out.

The programme, which will take place at Boots’s Mansfield store, incorporates a comprehensive range of measures - PoS data analysis, networked video and video analytics - within one package to deliver a robust solution to tackle fraud, theft and shrinkage. The retailer is a long-standing customer of PCMS’s Vision SmartStore product, which uses transactional data to identify exceptions to operating norms that indicate possible shrinkage. The new initiative involves the integration of networked CCTV and video analytics alongside SmartStore, enabling retailers to identify such anomalies through real-time analysis of security camera footage, enabling an instantaneous response to instances of shrinkage.

“The scope of the pilot scheme we have implemented with PCMS is unique within the industry and puts us at the forefront of the fight against shrinkage,” says Robert Jennings, head of loss prevention for Boots. “The programme was designed to examine ways of increasing profitability and improving the customer experience by making existing systems, such as CCTV cameras, work harder. It also offers wider stakeholder appeal, with features that are equally applicable to the marketing and management functions as they are to the discipline of loss prevention.”

“Having worked with Dream at a previous organisation, I was aware of the functionality available from the product,” says Kevin Heath, head of UK finance at Paperchase. “We were looking for a system that was flexible, intuitive and easy to use, as well as giving excellent visibility over the database. Dream, through its fully integrated ledger system, meets these requirements and also contains some well thought out extra functionality. I believe this product will give us a stable base to work from, create efficiencies across the department, allow us to easily interrogate the data and hence drive an informed approach to decision making. Our financial information will be more available and more useful, to the right people across the organisation.”

Now into their third year, the Retail Systems Awards recognise excellence and innovation in the field of information technology within the UK retail sector. The primary criteria for judging are the delivery of definable and significant business benefits, innovation and originality of application, ROI and project management issues such as delivery on time and within budget.

There are 15 categories to be awarded this year, including Environmental Initiative of the Year and Retailer of the Year. For information on table bookings, sponsorship opportunities and how to enter, email: martin.davies@retail-systems.com or visit: www.retail-systems.com/awards

Hitting the Mark, released by dotMailer and evaluating 46 retailers’ email campaigns against 20 criteria, shows that 46 per cent failed to comply with basic legal requirements. Topshop heads the index of UK retailers with a score of 86.5 but is one of only eight to score over 80 per cent. STA Travel, Asda and M&S were close behind with 85.5, 84.5 and 83.5 respectively. At the other end, shoe retailer Office came in last place (54), just behind Lidl and H&M (both 57). Overall, an alarming 35 per cent failed to score more than 70.

The five-year agreement, with a contracted value of over £4.5 million, will deliver complete end-to-end connectivity. The solution will use DSL technology across more than 800 sites in six countries. One reason Specsavers selected Vanco was to increase its bandwidth and scalability, allowing stores to be networked in the most efficient way to allow further growth. The company’s active negotiation process also enables the retailer to reduce its IT costs and keep up with the latest technology developments year-on-year.

The Index reveals that there is variation in the year-on-year growth of individual sectors. Of the sectors that are broken out, the most popular items for online bargain hunters in January were electrical items and clothing which saw the highest year-on year growth. Perhaps a sign of festive excess was the small 9.8 per cent growth in the sales of beers, wines and spirits and the high 18 per cent online spending on health and beauty.

January's high rate of growth is a change in direction from the previously falling trend – year-on-year sales in September was 73 per cent which fell to 66 per cent in November and then 49 per cent in December. The growth in sales volume over the last three months is more than double than the same period last year and is at the highest level since January 2003. While the overall e-retail market is growing because of more retailers entering the online market, the high growth is still concentrated on the bigger players.

“Our members report that they have seen better