Retail & Hospitality

3 min read

In the fast-changing, thin-margin world of consumer products, new winners and losers are created every day. Speed of innovation, time-to-market, and employee productivity can mean the difference between the next hot trend and a warehouse full of excess inventory. Success in the highly competitive consumer packaged goods (CPG) and retail industry depends on broad-ranging collaboration, […]

1 min read

Last week I was honored to co-present with Parvez Patel, senior director of e-strategy at Grainger, on a session at Internet Retailer Conference 2013, titled “Social Marketing for B2B:  It’s Not Just for B2C Anymore.”   In this session both of us discussed how we approached B2B social media from a Grainger perspective and from […]

1 min read

Internet Retailer Conference and Expo 2013, being held this year in Chicago from June 4th to 7th at the McCormick Convention Center, is expected to draw more than 9,500 attendees. Cisco retail industry marketing has grown from the initial Twitter feed to now include a comprehensive portfolio of social media properties, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube […]

1 min read

I have been participating in meetings with the Association of Retail Technology Standards (ARTS) since 2006 when Cisco joined as a member organization.  ARTS, a division of the National Retail Federation, is an international membership organization dedicated to reducing the costs of technology through standards.  Its mission is to develop best practices, technology standards and […]

1 min read

Do you want to increase sales by providing shoppers with the information they need when and where they need it – in your store? Cisco Connected Mobile Experiences solution can help you do just that. Connected Mobile Experiences is a new solution that helps enables retail organizations to use Wi-Fi location services to deliver engaging […]

2 min read

Last week, we sat down with Bart McGlothin and Christian Janoff from Cisco’s security team to discuss PCI Security for Retail to better understand “What is PCI Compliance?” and “How does that affect Retailers?” As a quick re-cap: PCI Compliance is a 12-step process to secure credit cards. Any retailer that accepts credit card payments […]

3 min read

A common perception is that there is a difference between being secure and being compliant. A Verizon analysis on cybercrime reported that cyber-attacks on Retailers are increasing and becoming streamlined and automated.  According to the 2012 Verizon PCI compliance report, “97% of breaches were avoidable through simple or intermediate controls”. How does a Retailer protect […]

3 min read

Reports of the physical retail store’s death have been greatly exaggerated. As a recent survey from the Cisco® Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) found, 93 percent of products sold in the United States are still bought in brick-and-mortar locations. And while technology has upended many product categories and more than a few individual retailers, it […]

1 min read

At NRF 2013, Rajesh Mani, Business Development Manager for Customer Business Transformation within Cisco’s Collaboration Technology Group, demonstrated how MicroStrategy Business Intelligence integrated with Cisco Jabber can transform the retail business process. MicroStrategy enables retailers to have a 360-degree snapshot of their store operations, including store vitals, employee and customer information, inventory, and current promotions. […]