1/29/2008	Paula Rosenblum
What's the 'Perfect Order'?
The “Perfect Order” has long been considered one that is received by a retailer on time, and with the correct ordered quantities. And it’s been a holy grail for retailers and vendors alike. It seems simple enough – send me what I asked for, when I ask for it, in the quantities I asked to receive. And if you don’t, I’ll probably punish you with a charge back, just as my customers will punish me for the out-of-stock that will result from an “imperfect order.” But delivering perfect orders consistently has been an elusive task. Its components may have changed, but the Perfect Order remains a retail metric that matters. Are you scorecarding your suppliers on the frequency of these Perfect Orders? If not, why not?
keywords: Retail, IT, Merchants, Order Fulfillment, Out-of-Stocks

1/22/2008	Steve Rowen
Merchandising 2008: A Question of Singularity
Can today’s merchandising solutions account for singularities (such as economic downturn) better today than they could 20 years ago? In essence, can the current generation of forecasting tools help retailers maximize their inventory turn even if the economy slumps? (Please keep in mind, this discussion centers around those selling general merchandise and apparel, as food and fast-moving consumer goods retailers are in a position to alter inventory much quicker)
keywords: Retail, IT, Merchandising, Forecasting, Technology, Economy, Recession

1/15/2008	Brian Kilcourse
Cooperation vs. Coercion
Are retailers and their partners ready to really work together? When RSR advises technology providers about working with retailers, we always point out that above all, retailers are great buyers. Although the line between the “art” and “science” of buying is constantly debated, the competency bar has been set so high by such companies such as Wal-Mart, Target, and Home Depot, that many retailers are seeking to merely even the playing field on the buy-side of their businesses. One thing that the above-mentioned retailers share in common, that other retailers should emulate, is that they take a collaborative rather than a coercive approach towards their wholesale and manufacturing partners, working with them to co-manage categories of merchandise for mutual benefit. What stands in the way of these partners in the retail value chain from truly integrating their inter-corporate processes?
keywords: Collaboration, Retail Technology, IT, Home Depot, Target, Wal-Mart

1/8/2008	Steve Rowen
What's Big for E-Commerce in 2008?
The dust has settled on Holiday 2007 sales. And by all accounts, the year proved to fulfill predictions that e-commerce would hit record percentage of holiday sales (PR Newswire puts the total at 29.2 Billion, up 19 percent from just last year). But what can we learn for the New Year? Will more retailers outsource their e-commerce activities? Will Private Label Merchandise dominate online sales? What do you see as big in '08?
keywords: Retail, Online Shopping, E-Commerce, Multi-Channel, Holiday Sales

1/7/2008	Nikki Baird
A Mobile Shopping Scenario
From nikkibaird.blogspot.com: I attended two sessions on Mobility on Sunday at CES. They were both geared more towards content providers and the future of that medium on phones – not really oriented on shopping. But one of the speakers – Shane Lennon of Gypsii, a mobile-based social networking service – gave an example of how someone might use their service, and it has a lot of serious implications for retail. He spoke of how someone could upload a video of a drunk friend, potentially straight to something like MySpace or YouTube and alert other friends to the revelry, complete with directions. Andrew Perlman of Vringo picked up on the story and noted that with his service you could then set that video as your video ring tone – on other people’s phones. So if you call your buddy, he or she is greeted with the video evidence of their drunken revelry. I must lack the social networking gene, because I fail to see how that’s cool, but that’s another story. What I started thinking about was what that means in the store. The sleeping Comcast guy is already beyond infamous, but what happens when a customer records a video of employees behaving badly in a store on their cell phone, and zaps it straight to YouTube? How long before we see the nightmare Home Depot help, or the Best Buy employee blithely getting the technology explanation completely wrong? According to Douglas Craig from Discovery Communications, we’re only 1-2 phone iterations away from turning every consumer into a broadcaster (at least in the US). How do you combat this? With our most recent research on workforce management and loss prevention, Paula and I have been circling this issue, trying to find a way to break what really becomes a vicious cycle – employees are not engaged, so customers get mad, so corporate cracks down, and employees, caught between corporate and customers, disengage further. And everybody loses. We're still working on that, but a place to start would be Jack Mitchell, of Hug Your Customers fame - he's got a new book coming out, called Hug Your People. If the retail industry could pull that off, what a wonderful world it would be.
keywords: Mobile shopping, retail technology