Today, Cisco announced its acquisition of ThinkSmart Technologies, a software company that delivers location data analysis using a Wi-Fi infrastructure. Together, Cisco and ThinkSmart will enhance the wireless network infrastructure by providing location analytics to service provider and enterprise customers to more effectively reach end users.
ThinkSmart – headquartered in Cork, Ireland – provides insight into Wi-Fi location analytics alongside historical trends, enabling customers to have greater visibility into movements and patterns of trending data. By integrating ThinkSmart’s technology into Cisco Mobility Services Engine (MSE), customers will be able to aggregate, analyze, predict and react to consumer behavior. Read More »
A large part of my job is explaining things to people. You can have the greatest technology in the world, but if you can’t explain to people why it is important, and how it will make a difference in their life or their business, then you have only done half the job.
That is why I am interested in different learning styles. One of the more widely-known models to describe different learning styles is Neil Fleming’s VAK/VARK model. Fleming postulates that there are three different types of learners: visual, auditory and kinesthetic. To vastly over-simplify Fleming’s work, some people learn best by seeing, others by listening and still others by touching and doing. While this might seem self-evident, understanding a student’s learning style can be a vital tool for teachers. Moreover, knowing your own learning style can significantly increase the amount you can learn and retain.
The consumerization of information technology has been a boon to innovations in the workspace. With mobile phones and tablets, today’s employees and consumers carry a significant amount of technologies on them. Retailers can leverage these technologies to enable employee productivity and improve customer experience if it can be managed effectively an securely.
Today’s consumers are technology enabled, capable of shopping any time, any location and geographically mobile. Catching and keeping these shoppers are not easy tasks for brick and mortar or e-Commerce retailers today.
What are some innovative ways the retail industry is adjusting to the needs of shoppers today?
Online Commerce with Pop-Up Stores and Personalized Products
This was the scene in San Francisco this week where IndoChino, a menswear provider and tailor company, set up a one week temporary location on the busy Market Street. Integrating made to measure tailoring, traveling locations and online storefront, this allows customers to get measured for custom suits on site and products delivered to home.
Future orders for personalized products can be placed online including shirts and accessories. The result combines the scaling of mass production with personalized products, online customer service and only one on site visit in pop up store locations.
Retailing on Wheels -- Going to where the shoppers are
Cisco’s Visual Networking Index Forecast projects 18-fold growth in global mobile internet data traffic from 2011 to 2016 – and predicts that mobile cloud traffic will account for 71% of total mobile data traffic by 2016. In a world where mobility is on the rise, enterprises are facing a rapidly evolving landscape, where more and more personal devices are coming into the workplace. Cisco’s Unified Workspace lets enterprises securely adapt to the increasing presence of personal devices, by offering a set of three Smart Solutions that integrate multiple personal devices securely and seamlessly to increase productivity and enhance collaboration.
The BYOD Smart Solution provides end-to-end BYOD lifecycle management and keeps productivity moving. In addition, it streamlines IT management by helping to secure data with unified policy.
