Starring Ikea, Asda, and JCPenney: RTIH’s biggest retail technology news stories of the week
It’s Friday, the weekend is almost upon us, so let’s kick back and reflect on another eventful week for the retail systems space. Here's your briefing on the most important stories from the past five days, including Ikea’s pursuit of omnichannel growth in the US, Asda’s self-driving grocery home delivery trial, and the 2023 RTIH Top 100 Retail Technology Influencers List.
1. Drum roll, please. RTIH publishes its 2023 Top 100 Retail Technology Influencers List
The latest edition of the RTIH Top 100 Retail Technology Influencers List has arrived!
Here are the people who made a splash in 2022 and are set for a barnstorming 2023.
RTIH has scoured the retail technology world to find the most influential figures for this comprehensive list of people and trends that shape the industry and help drive it forward.
We’re living in unprecedented times.
The Covid-19 outbreak has driven a seismic change in shopping habits, with checkout free stores, automation in the supply chain, rapid delivery services, and the metaverse making waves.
Such disruption requires new ways of problem solving and thought leaders who can both evangelise and execute on the likes of digital transformation and omnichannel success.
Which is where the RTIH Top 100 Retail Technology Influencers List comes in, presented, we should stress, in no particular order.
We hope you enjoy reading through it and, as always, if you would like to give feedback or believe that there are some glaring omissions, please feel free to get in touch here.
Download the list in pdf format here.
Or read via Issuu.
👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻
2. Ikea preps biggest ever investment in USA as it eyes omnichannel retail growth
Ingka Group, the largest Ikea retailer, has announced an investment of more than $2.2 billion in omnichannel growth in the United States over the next three years.
Marking its largest investment in almost four decades of operating in the country, the company will open new stores and locations, strengthen its fulfilment network, and boost its product offering.
The aim is to get closer to customers both physically and digitally.
In the first phase, the plan is to open eight new stores and nine plan and order points, creating over 2,000 jobs. Ikea US has also announced new locations in San Francisco, California and Arlington, Virginia, set to open this summer.
3. Halfords taps Juniper Networks AI driven wired and wireless access solutions for digital push
Halfords has selected Juniper Networks’ AI driven wired and wireless access solutions in its stores, garages and offices.
The retailer says that it has invested heavily to accelerate its digital transformation, leveraging the benefits of Mist AI and the cloud to create better commercial services and a unified, omnichannel retail experience for its customers.
Halfords has reduced network related trouble tickets by 100% and has seen a 35% improvement in uptime in the garages and stores where the deployment has been completed.
Mist AI works in conjunction with Juniper Access Points to deliver Wi-Fi 6 and virtual Bluetooth LE services to Halfords’ staff and customer smartphones, Point of Sale devices, in-store video displays and other connected devices.
Juniper EX Series switches provide access to wired devices with AI driven automation and insights for provisioning, troubleshooting and operations.
Marvis, a virtual network assistant driven by Mist AI, provides actions for fault identification and self-driving network operations for correction.
Halfords plan to further boost its network with the modernisation of its WAN, which connects its 1,400+ stores, auto centres and mobile service vans.
To achieve this, it is also planning to deploy Juniper’s AI driven SD-WAN solution, which leverages the same cloud and Mist AI engine as its new wired and wireless network.
4. Asda and Wayve lay claim to UK’s largest self-driving grocery home delivery trial
Asda customers can now receive their shopping via a Wayve self-driving vehicle in what is pitched as the UK’s largest autonomous grocery home delivery trial.
In partnership with Wayve, the year long trial will give the supermarket the ability to autonomously deliver groceries to a catchment area of over 170,000 residents across 72,000 households in London.
The self-driving vehicles will join its existing online delivery operation at the Park Royal superstore in West London and have the capability to drive themselves to customers’ homes.
Asda Park Royal customers can place their next-day delivery orders online as usual, choosing from the full range of online products and selecting a delivery slot that suits them.
The only difference is they could be randomly selected to have their order delivered in a self-driving vehicle.
During the trial, both an Asda colleague and supervising Wayve safety driver will be in the vehicle when making deliveries. Asda colleagues will load and unload the groceries at the customer’s home.
5. JCPenney hires new Chief Customer Officer as it invests in retail technology powered omnichannel experiences
JCPenney has announced the appointment of Katie Mullen as Chief Customer Officer.
Previously serving as JCPenney’s Chief Digital Officer, Mullen will continue to oversee e-commerce strategy and omnichannel development, with an added emphasis on customer marketing, engagement, analytics etc.
She will lead the retailer’s efforts to deliver an end-to-end integrated shopping experience that is relevant for today’s customers. A key focus of this new role is driving innovation in digital, data and analytics to transform the customer experience
In a bid to deepen loyalty with existing and new customers, JCPenney will continue to invest in experiences both physical and digital, powered by technology.
6. UK Digital Sandwich platform taps IoT, blockchain, AI technologies to digitise food retail supply chain
A UK government backed consortium of food manufacturers, technology specialists and academics have announced the launch of Digital Sandwich following a two-year development project.
The platform has been developed to connect primary production and supply chains to retail to provide traceability and provenance of ingredients whilst increasing manufacturing productivity, improving processes and reducing waste across the supply chain.
The project serves as a national demonstrator of a digital agri-food supply chain, using sandwich manufacturing as the use case.
Designed to be an open platform, it has established a digital supply chain that paves the way for a wider ecosystem network and offers a low barrier approach so that supply chain organisations of all sizes and technological maturity can participate.
The project extends the use of IoT, blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to the ready-made food supply to ensure the traceability of every component ingredient in the supply chain – from primary production to retail.
The consortium of organisations behind the platform includes IMS Evolve, an IoT company; Raynor Foods, a sandwich supplier; University of Lincoln, University of Exeter, Digital Catapult, Sweetbridge, Crosspay, NetFoundry, INDUSTRIA Technology and R3.
It was backed by the UK government through its Innovate UK programme.
Continue reading…