NRF focus shifts to consumer

The customer has always been king but this time, he is really in charge

For the first time at NRF, while vendors have been saying the customer is king for years, the customer is now front and centre.

Overall themes were hard to find, but key ones were cloud, which seems to retailers to be principally about saving money and getting fast deployments; in-store multi media; deeper analytics; and on line optimisation.

Thanks to our friends at RIS News for some of the highlights :

· Aarons has deployed Aruba Mobile Virtual Enterprise architecture at 1,800-plus stores
· C. Wonder is using VeriFone GlobalBay Mobile POS as its exclusive point-of-sale system, with no fixed POS terminals in any stores
· Family Dollar is deploying Kronos WFM suite at 7,000 stores
· Marks & Spencer is working with NCR to pilot new multimedia zones in stores that include digital touchscreens and video walls
· Rite Aid is using cloud-based WorkPlace OnLine scheduling at 4,700 stores
· Target will implement a Teradata Active Data Warehouse to manage complex user queries on large data volumes across the enterprise
· Tesco will begin deploying Retalix 10 Store Suite in stores worldwide
· Urban Outfitters has selected QuantiSense Decision Orchestration Platform for BI and analytics

There were a record 24,000 attendees.