The Imminent Demise of The Wallet As We Know It

When I first was exposed to the Keyring smart phone application by Mobestream, I though it was the greatest little app.  It allows a consumer to scan-in loyalty, membership cards with barcodes, organize and store them in a smart phone. Cardstar is a similar app.  Since then, similar apps such as AppCard and Stocard have […]

Retail Software Company Acquisitions – from a Retailer’s Perspective

Part 1 of a four-part series by Robert Lawson – Senior consultant, RTG This article is the first of a four-part series analyzing the retail industry’s software companies’ evolution through acquisitions.  Each part of the series will focus on one of the following perspectives: I.         Retailers’ Perspective II.        Software Vendors’ Perspective III.      Consultants’ Perspective IV.       […]

Process Improvement

By creating the new position of Senior VP of Operational Excellence, Target gives due importance to the concept of ‘process improvement’ in retailing. In recent years, we have been hearing buzzwords in the retail industry like ‘customer centricity’, ‘omni-channel’, ‘social media’ and Cloud Computing.  Retailers have been placing much emphasis on software and hardware to […]

SaaS and Business Continuity

From the Principal’s Office In this issue we take a look at software as a service (SaaS) from the perspective of the SaaS software delivery architecture as an enabler to business continuity in the event of a shutdown of operations at a business corporate headquarters. Bob Amster – Principal, RTG   SaaS and Business Continuity […]

Do you speak English well?

From the Principal’s Office In this issue we take a look at the future role, and longevity of the traditional CIO, and at the proper use of the English language (Amster’s pet peeve). Is there a future for the CIO? In discussing the current trends in information systems and technology, one of our very senior […]

A Mish-Mosh of Things

From the Principal’s Office This is the first Newsletter of the new year!  It will be an interesting year, indeed.  Enjoy and let us know what you are thinking, send us your comments. Bob Amster – Principal, RTG Well, we were at the NRF Conference and met old and new friends saw some new things […]

Item-level RFID Is Not Dead, It Is Essential

From the Principal’s Office This is our last newsletter before Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, Chanukah, New Year, my birthday, and the NRF Conference.  To all our clients, friends, colleagues, we extend our wishes for a prosperous holiday season.  We’ll see many of you at the Jacob Javitz Center in New York in January. […]

A quick look at how rapidly our technical world is changing

From the Principal’s Office It hit me recently again that technology, even confined to the products and services offered just to our industry is moving so fast that it s makes it difficult for those of us who have to keep up with it and understand it (CIOs and Consultants alike).  There are consequences, but […]

Omni-channel retailing spawns the omni-channel conundrum

From the Principal’s Office Retail sales have been soft in most markets with the usual bright exceptions here and there. A man with a lot of security experience but absolutely no retail business experience was named the CIO of Target following the security breach.  Knee-jerk reaction? Mobile POS sans traditional POS registers will become more […]

dealreporter.com

Bob Amster was quoted in an April 2014 issue of dealreporter.com regarding payment systems and mobile POS.