Mobile POS

There may still be some uncertainty when it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic, but one thing is certain: The 2020 holiday shopping season was an anomaly, and this year is going to look a lot different. According to eMarketer, U.S. holiday retail sales are expected to increase 2.7 percent to $1.093 trillion in 2021. While…

Prior to the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic, retailers were investing in stores by rightsizing their real estate footprints and reshaping the store experience around customer engagement. Now retailers are challenged with maintaining the same level of engagement, while also providing a contactless, safe experience and managing social distancing. Putting a mobile device into the…

Mobile technology use is soaring in retail, and for good reason. IHL Group found retailers that provide mobile sales tools for staff enjoy 77 percent higher sales growth than those that don’t, and those that deploy mobile point of sale (POS) achieve an impressive 92 percent higher sales. It’s rare to see such spectacular return…

While the last decade saw the rapid adoption of mobile devices (e.g., smartphones and tablets) in business and the multitude of benefits they offer, it also saw a series of challenges in their security, such as the tracking and management of these devices. Luckily, mobile device management (MDM) has evolved in tandem with these mobile…

The merging of physical and digital has made retail customers more demanding than ever. What do customers want? They want everything … and they want it now. They want the excitement only physical retail can deliver. As Neiman Marcus CEO Geoffroy van Raemdonck told Forbes about its new store at Manhattan’s Hudson Yards, it’s not…

The dust has settled following the “retail apocalypse” of 2018, and the numbers reveal that retail’s radical transformation is more nuanced than we once thought. While headlines in early 2019 spelled the end of retail, data from IHL Group shows otherwise. In 2019, retailers announced 2,965 more store openings than closings. Certain retailers led the…

The explosion of smartphones and tablets has created a new way of living and working, especially for the 70 percent of workers, known as untethered workers, who don’t sit behind a desk every day. Companies are embracing the mobile shift and have begun to move their IT applications onto mobile platforms for workers who are…

I’ve long been a proponent of making omnichannel a C-suite issue. It has to come from the top down. But the brands struggling to deliver a true omnichannel experience have a fundamental issue. At an organizational level, many brands still operate online and in-store in silos. E-commerce and physical retail are their own separate entities,…

Let’s be real: the state of brick-and-mortar retail in 2019 is equally exciting and terrifying. Amid widespread closures, uncertainty and the ever-present behemoth that is Amazon.com, there's an amazing wave of innovation in mobility that has the potential to transform — and yes, save — the retail experience for a new generation of consumers used…

Anyone who has walked down Main Street or through a shopping mall recently has seen it. Store after store shuttered. Big-name retailers gone. Even anchor-store locations decamped. These are challenging times for brick-and-mortar retailers. According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, 50 well-known store chains have filed for bankruptcy protection in 2017, among them such iconic…