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Inquiry Spotlight: Retail Point-Of-Sale Systems, Q3 2009
November 19, 2009 , 5 pages
by George Lawrie
Retail line-of-business executives know that technology plays a central role in helping to deliver improved customer service with increased margin. They look to CIOs to push what were once purely tactical point-of-sale (POS) systems to become solutions that link consumers, sales associates, back-office applications, and eCommerce platforms and deliver a competitively differentiated shopping experience. We analyzed more than 40 POS inquiries from Forrester clients and found that they fall into three broad categories: 1) POS vendor landscape; 2) trends in POS systems; and 3) POS service providers. Given the new strategic significance of POS in driving Experience-Based Differentiation in retail, CIOs need to recruit line-of-business allies to develop a comprehensive business case for strategic integration of store and headquarter applications.

Navigating The Twittersphere
How To Market On Twitter
November 19, 2009 , 6 pages
by Nate Elliott
Successfully engaging with consumers on Twitter requires both the right overarching strategy and a series of small best practices. Interactive marketers must ensure that consumers can find their brands' accounts, confirm that they are legitimate, and easily identify who is tweeting. Marketers must also provide a mixture of promotional and non-promotional content and decide how often — and in what ways — they will directly engage with consumers. To extract the greatest value possible from Twitter, balance department-level control of different accounts with a broad view of how your various accounts work together to reach users.

The State Of Point-Of-Sale Systems
Retail CIOs Around The World Expect POS To Become More Strategic
November 18, 2009 , 22 pages
by George Lawrie
Retail IT is challenged to support new cross-channel offerings and the ability to sell services and merchandise not provided in the store itself. It also needs to support rapid innovation in point-of-sale (POS) peripherals and the promise of more direct-to-consumer promotion in stores. Retail CIOs must recruit the heads of business functions to help define the requirements of next-generation POS that can deliver Experience-Based Differentiation and integrate Social Computing with in-store experiences. The business case for POS replacement should be based on improved capabilities to deliver upsell and cross-sell recommendations that lift average order value and generate repeat visits through integration with enterprise apps like loyalty or order management and with in-store direct-to-consumer promotion.

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