The companies with most disruptive retail solutions 2019

www.insightssuccess.com
June 2019
Connecting Global Retailers and Suppliers with an
Innovative SaaS Platform
Retail
The
Companies with
Most
Solutions 2019
Sky IT Group
Jay Hakami
Company of the Month
Sailesh Savani
Founder & CEO
CompuLynx
Volume- 6
Issue- 1

E
ver the past decade, the retail industry has gone through a major transformation, and it continues
Oto evolve quickly. However, to stay competitive, most of the retailers have moved from growth
from new stores to growth via investments in areas like launching new sales model, which of
course is digital, acquiring new businesses, or even transforming the fulfillment processes of
those businesses.
According to experts, the market will soon be defined by emerging technologies that can change the way
consumers interact with the brand of their choice, the emergence of the new battle lines for e-commerce
platforms. So, let us look at few of the trends that could change the retail sector in the years to come.
Experiential Retail, the new Fad: Thanks to the millennials, consumers are slowly moving away from
shopping for products, and seeking for a much more engaging experience. Thanks to all these, a simple
remodeling of a store is no longer possible and more than 3800 stores are all set to close their shutters by
the end of the year. So, in order to stay in the competition one has to survive by creating an
engaging experience.
Privacy: Thanks to the connected world, privacy has become an area of concern for everyone. And for
retailers, data is the need of the hour. For over a decade, the retail industry struggled with the use of data.
However, now with the regulations, retailers are slowly putting privacy compliance road maps in its
place. At the end of the day, integrity matters the most when it comes to creating brand loyalty,
especially when dealing with personal information.
Faster Shipping Process: With the ever growing usage of internet and social media, e-commerce is
quickly marching towards becoming one of the most popular shopping platforms. Nowadays, most of
the brand maintains their online presence and that too by offering very competitive price. However,
selling products in a competitive price doesn’t always cut through, as with the fast paced lives clients
expect a faster delivery. Hence, there entered programs like Amazon Prime, which have made the two
day shipping a standard procedure, as cutting down shipping time is very much important when it comes
to staying afloat.
Embracing Changes

Embracing New Technologies: Now is the perfect time for retailers to find out how to scale solutions
like ERPs and others and embed them into their way of doing businesses. Retailers should make some
significant changes and constantly mine the collected data, adapt to the future of the work and transform
their operations in order to deliver on the brand promise.
So, here are few trends that could change the world of retail for good. Lastly these trends in retail are
completely driven by the brilliant combination of shifting consumer preference, and an evolving
technological landscape.
So, in order to acknowledge companies that are working round the clock to make the retail industry a
better place, Insights Success has enlisted, “The Companies with Most Disruptive Retail Solutions
2019”.
Featuring our Cover Story is Sky IT Group, a company which has a knack of solving complex business
problems with a perfect combination of hardware, software and exceptional technical expertise. The
company was formed in November 2000. At that point of time with such a small team, the organization
put a strong emphasis on its staff - education, certifications, training, seminars, and customer service is
what drives innovative solutions to exceed customer expectations.
Also while flipping the pages, don’t forget to go through the articles and CXOs written by our in-house
editorial team and industry experts respectively.
Happy Reading!
Customers don't care how much you know,
until they find out how much you care.
“ “
Kaustav Roy

08 Connecting Global Retailers and
Suppliers with an Innovative SaaS
Platform
Sky IT Group
Cover Story
CONTENTS
08
Develop Your
INNOVATION
CULTURE for a
FUTURE-READY
BARAMI
One Stop Shop
for Professionals
on the Go
Is the Single Brand
Dead in MPS?
Expert’s Talk 40 Expert’s Insights16 Leadership Column28

CONTENTS
3 Remarkable printing
Innovations in the Field of
Printing Business
Critical Importance of
Digital Marketing
in the growth of Start-ups
46
34
24
26
When the Goal
is to Help
Customers Succeed
Cloud4Wi
20
Changing the
POS Industry
since Inception
Chromis POS
Helping Retail
Sector since
Inception
Improving
Business
Intelligence
Since Inception
Transforming
Merchandising
through Cloud
Computing
32 Eurostop 44 Protect38 Ivy Mobility
Editor’s Choice
Industry Pointers
Key POS Trends
Retail Sector the
Reshaping
Industry Trends

sales@insightssuccess.com
June, 2019
Editor-in-Chief
Co-designerSenior Sales Manager Business Development Manager
Marketing Manager
Technical Head
Technical Specialist Digital Marketing Manager
Research Analyst
Database Management Technology Consultant
Pooja M. Bansal
Managing Editor
Anish Miller
Executive Editor
Kaustav Roy
Assistant Editors
Jenny Fernandes
Bhushan Kadam
Visualizer
David King
Art & Design Director
Amol Kamble
Associate Designer
Iresh Mathapati
Kshitij S Peter Collins
John Matthew
Sales Executives
David, Kevin, Mark, Manish
Business Development Executives
Steve, Joe, Alan, VishalJacob Smile
Aditya Marry D’Souza
SME-SMO Executive
Prashant Chevale Calvin Jones
Circulation Manager
Robert Brown Stella Andrew David Stokes
Priyanka
Co-designer
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Jay Hakami
Founder, President & CEO
Retail
The
Companieswith Most
Solutions 2019

Retail intelligence,
business insights and
consumer trends from
more than 200 retailers
representing more than
10,000 stores located on
six continents to
2500+users from 800+
global fashion and
beauty brands.
“
“
Connecting Global Retailers and
Suppliers with an Innovative SaaS Platform

ounded with a mission to solve complex business
Fproblems utilizing the perfect combination of
hardware, software and exceptional technical
expertise, Sky IT Group evolved to be recognized as the
trailblazer in retail industry since its inception in November
2000. During its initial phase, although with a small team,
the organization focused on business intelligence solutions
to retail and wholesale industries. As a result of a strong
industry understanding combined with exceptional data
science and analytics expertise, the company has created a
SaaS platform – SKYPAD – that serves as the engine for
sell-through data distribution, collection and reporting
between the retailers and wholesalers.
Sky IT Group prides itself not only an amazing and superior
technology but also with a very determined, talented and
knowledgeable teams of professionals with a thirst for
knowledge and a passion for innovation. Bringing together
industry experts and technology wizards have proven to be
a perfect combination for the company’s success. Sky IT
Group’s biggest asset has been and always will be the
committed teams of professionals who work tirelessly on
building, developing, deploying and supporting its ever
growing client base.
The edition The Companies with Most Disruptive Retail
Solutions 2019 envisions admiring tireless efforts of such
pioneers and takes pride to feature Sky IT Group as its
cover.
In an interview with Insights Success, Jay Hakami the
Founder, President, and CEO of Sky IT Group shared
insightful information about the organization, its flagship
products, vision and many more.
Below are the highlights of the interview between Insights
Success and Jay Hakami:
Give a brief overview of Sky IT Group, its uniqueness,
and vision.
Sky IT Group – headquartered in NYC - was founded in
2000 with a clear mission to solve complex business
challenges with information technology solutions. We
targeted the retail and wholesale apparel, footwear, and
beauty/cosmetics industries. This focus led to the
development of two complementary SaaS solutions: a)
SKYPAD for Wholesale, which provides suppliers with
insights into their product sales performance across all of
their retail partners, as well as their company-owned retail
channels, and b) SKYPAD for Retail, which provides
multi-vendor retailers with a cost-effective platform to
distribute sell-through data to their vendor community with
a “best practices” reporting views.
What are the cutting edge services/solutions offered by
Sky IT Group?
SKYPAD for Wholesale today collects sell-through data
from more than 200 retailers representing well over 10,000
stores around the world servicing 800+ global luxury
suppliers/brands. SKYPAD is a unique engine built to
collect data from any retailer, in any format, and organize it
in a way that allows users to analyze the “what, when,
where” of their product performance across all of their sales
channels. SKYPAD offers the ability to report by any
combination of store location, product attributes and time
dimension.
SKYPAD for Retail serves as a vehicle for multi-vendor
retailers to standardize sell-through data distribution and
grant their merchants access to the same reporting provided
to the suppliers/brands, while fostering open collaboration
between sellers and buyers.
What are your strategies to understand the customer
needs?
SKYPAD is constantly evolving based on our customers’
input. We continue to spend significant time with our
suppliers/brands customers and retailers to understand their
needs, and we modify the data capturing process and
reporting based on their business requirements. In addition,
we provide training to our existing customers - at no charge
– so new and additional users can take advantage of the
SKYPAD platform. Out of these sessions, we can identify
ways to enhance the core SKYPAD offerings.
What are the challenges faced while catering to the
customer needs and how Sky IT Group is serving to
tackle them?
The SKYPAD platform has unlimited reporting capabilities
yet each customer prefers viewing their data in ways that
are specific to their business decisions. Therefore, we have
developed an ad-hoc reporting view that allows each user to
easily create their unique, user-defined reports.
Proven “best practices”
sell-through data
collection, distribution
and reporting solutions
for retailers and wholesalers
“
“
Cover Story

Jay Hakami is Founder, President, and
CEO of Sky IT Group is an 18-year IT
solutions provider, headquartered in
NYC. Mr. Hakami's 30+ years of
successful executive leadership roles
have always focused on in-depth
understanding of business challenges
and solving them with the deployment
of creative and practical IT
solutions.
Prior to founding Sky IT
Group, for a period of 10
years, Mr. Hakami served as
Senior Vice President and
large system integrator with
the overall responsibility of
operations, marketing, sales,
and services delivery of ERP
and business intelligence
solutions for the apparel
manufacturing and
distribution industries.
In 2000 Mr. Hakami founded
Sky IT Group. During the ﬁrst
few years, the business focus
was on business intelligence
and data warehouse projects
speciﬁcally for the fashion industry.
All of which led to the development
of SKYPAD, the industry staple for
sell-through data sharing between
retailers and their
suppliers/brands.
About the Leader

Transforming the way retailers
distribute sell-through data
and how suppliers/brands
consume it for optimized
decision making
and unparalleled collaboration
between buyers and sellers.
“
“

suppliers/brands can see their product sales performance on
SKYPAD in a timely, consistent, accurate, and secure
manner to improve their decision making. Both retailers
and suppliers/brands can interact by looking at the same
views on SKYPAD and therefore, enhance collaboration
and have a meaningful discussion based on facts. We are
continuously innovating and adding functionality and
solutions that not only optimize the user experience but
address market changes and business needs.
Motivating Client Admirations
“We are continuously looking at ways in which we can
drive productivity, enhance collaboration, and strengthen
business insights. The data that SKYPAD’s platform delivers
will enable our merchants to connect with our vendor-
partners more efficiently, helping us to better meet our
ultimate goal of delivering our customers an unparalleled
shopping experience.”-Tracy Margolies, Chief Merchant,
Saks Fifth Avenue.
“Our industry structure and dynamics continue to change
at an accelerating pace. We strongly believe that with the
use of tools like SKYPAD we can enable greater
collaboration between our teams and our brands, with
better insights and faster execution.” - Nathan Johnson,
Senior Vice President, Merchandise Planning, Neiman
Marcus Group.
“SKYPAD is a great partner for Theory. They are a trusted
resource for brands, giving them the ability to monitor sales
performance and aggregate data across selling platforms
considering multiple variables and performance
indicators.” - Andrew Rosen, Founder and CEO of Theory
and Helmut Lang
“To collect data from so many different data sources
accurately not only saves us significant time and money, it
provides us accurate insights into trends early in the season
so we can take action to maximize selling and profitability
with our retail partners.” - Jason Epstein, Senior Vice
President of Operations at Alice + Olivia
Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons
learned that have shaped the journey of the company.
Sky IT Group was formed in 2000 to provide business
intelligence and data warehousing to the retail and
wholesale industries. At the time, there was very limited
“retail intelligence”, insights, and data sharing between
retailers and their suppliers. This was the problem that the
SKYPAD platform has come to address. In 2008, SKYPAD
started as a literal back-of-napkin sketch that became a
PowerPoint presentation. Contemporary designer brand
Theory and mid-market brand development group Chaus
U.S.A. were among the first presented to and remain
subscribers to this day. SKYPAD’s features and benefits
have grown along with its client base, expanding first
domestically then globally. Today, it provides data from
10,000+ stores on six continents to 2,500+ users at 800+
brands, being used by 72% of the global luxury fashion
brands to make sound business decisions based on facts.
Our current user community includes global luxury brands
such as; LVMH, Kering, Michael Kors, Tory Burch,
Brunello Cuccinelli and a host of others. Major retailers
currently utilizing the SKYPAD Platform for data
distribution include Saks Fifth Ave, Neiman Marcus,
Bergdorf Goodman, and more.
What according to you could be the potential future
of the retail industry and how does Sky IT Group
envision sustaining its competency?
Today, forward-looking retailers are willing to share data
with their suppliers more than ever before. However, with
their legacy systems, this becomes a tedious, time-
consuming task and ends up being handled by the retail
buyers in a very inconsistent, manual way. Meanwhile, the
suppliers/brands need timely and accurate insight into
product sales across all their sales channels. For informed
decision-making and planning, they must know which
styles, colors, and sizes are selling well and which are not
by chain, store locations, as well as by span of time.
SKYPAD has effectively addressed both challenges by
providing retailers with a platform to facilitate the data
distribution to their suppliers at no cost to them. The
suppliers/brands have found SKYPAD to be their “best
practices” dashboard, presenting a complete reporting of
their merchandise sales performance across all the retail
customers, company-owned stores, and web sales.
Where does Sky IT Group see itself in the long run and
what are its future goals?
We believe we are still at the beginning of our journey. We
consider SKYPAD as the “engine” between every retailer
and their suppliers/brands. It certainly benefits the retailers
as they reduce costs, and better serves the suppliers by
standardizing their data sharing through one entity. The

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s the digital landscape continues to change at a rapid pace,
Adismantling and disrupting the way that we do business, how can
we ensure that our leadership and organisational thinking evolves
at the same rate? The CEO is ultimately responsible for the success or
failure of the company that they lead, which, in today’s world, means
ensuring an organisation can adapt to this fast rate of change. To do this,
leaders need to know how to innovate with agility and speed. This means,
on the ground during day-to-day work, that each employee has a clear
understanding of how they contribute to creating value out of new ideas
and a common language to enable them to work together. As a CEO, part
of your role is to foster a culture of innovation that can harness the often
disparate skills and mindsets required to successfully innovate. The key is
to understand that innovation is a journey, which includes spotting trends
and discontinuities and generating new ideas, through to investing and
implementing those ideas that can potentially have the most impact. The
skill is to know how to match people’s strengths to the right part.
How do employees currently react to innovation conversations?
Often, the ﬁrst people to embrace innovation tend to love ideas and can
identify trends, patterns and opportunities. They are curious and ﬁt the
classic stereotype of creativity – playful, open-minded and attracted to
Natalie Turner is a Keynote
speaker and Author of the book
Yes, You Can Innovate. Discover
your innovation strengths and
develop your creative potential
which was selected as book of
the month in both the UK and
Singapore earlier this year. She is
the Founder and CEO of
The Entheo Network, a global
innovation company and has
exemplary expertise in the eld of
marketing, business strategy,
and leadership development.
Under her leadership, the
company provides a suite of
innovative products and services to
help individuals and organizations
create new sources of value
whilst building innovation skills,
capabilities and culture. She is
®
also the inventor of the 6 ‘I’s
Innovation which measures
innovation strengths of
individuals and teams to unlock
the innovation culture in an
organization.
www.6-i-innovation.com.
About the Author
Develop Your
INNOVATION
CULTURE
for
a
FUTURE-READY
Organisation
June 2019|16

novelty. Innovation, truly deep and sustainable innovation,
combines both creativity and discipline, which are curious
bedfellows. It is a considered process that requires a raft of
different skills and ways of thinking, combined towards
creating a common outcome. In fact, the innovation journey
is more like a cycle that can start at any point, not just in the
playful and curious spaces.
There are probably many employees in your organisation
who do not identify with this sense of curiosity, or think
that they have light bulb moments, but who are nonetheless
crucial to the success of innovation as an outcome. You will
not embed an agile innovation culture without showing
employees of all stripes and skillsets where they fit in. The
innovation culture needs a common framework and
language. Within this shared understanding, different styles
are more likely to interact with, and appreciate, the
contribution of others. Creating the best environment for
each stage of the journey, so that people are empowered to
contribute their strengths will improve the likelihood of
success.
Understanding the innovation journey
Start with aligning teams around PURPOSE, what are they
trying to achieve and why? Then move to how they can
identify opportunities through understanding trends and
patterns, often related to changes in human behaviour. Then
move to the creative space where people ignite ideas,
through practices such as brainstorming and value
proposition design. After you have an array of ideas, submit
them to analysis and experimentation, separating the good
ones from the bad, investigating whether they are useful,
not just novel. The interrelationship between these three
spaces is often where you see design thinking processes in
action. Now, if you have a few really good ideas that have a
high chance of working, start to think through how to best
make them work. If not, revisit the original-identified
opportunity or generate alternative ideas and solutions.
When ready for investment, innovation leadership is really
critical. This is often the graveyard of ideas. Here
demonstrate courage; assign resources, whether it is people,
time or money. Once ideas are funded, find people who are
great at implementation and getting things done. Once the
idea is starting to get traction and have an impact, harness
the skills of improvement and optimisation to scale and
leverage the ideas into other areas of opportunity.
There are no straight roads. This is why innovating is often
so difficult. Not only are you trying to do something new,
you have to harness diversity towards an often unknown
outcome. Creating the best environment for each stage of
the journey, so that people are empowered to contribute
their strengths, will help to create a successful outcome.
This means teaching people when to contribute and when to
pass the baton on to someone else. This is true
collaboration, anchored in a clear purpose that is focused on
the success of the idea.
Give each of your employees a proactive role in the
innovation journey
Culture could be termed “how we do things around here”
and part of what contributes towards this is how leaders act
and behave towards the people that they manage and lead.
Even more so when it comes to innovating. If people
understand their contribution, they will have the confidence
and courage to start thinking of themselves as innovators.
They will also understand when they will have the most
impact. The innovation journey needs a different culture at
different points; a culture that allows for ideas to be
generated is not the same as one needed to investigate those
ideas.
Innovation and the CEO
Lead by example. Understand the part of the innovation
journey that you are best at, and be aware of the bias that
you will have because of that. Increase the awareness of
yourself and others,so that you can empower everyone to
cultivate environments that allow their strengths to flourish.
Ensure that every skillset and its contribution to innovation
is respected and rewarded. This can only be done by
understanding the whole of the innovation journey, end-to-
end. Diversity is key, if you have a lot of people who are
good at generating ideas, you may end up with very little
that actually gets done. If you have a lot of people who are
good at implementation, you may end up dealing with
today’s work very well, but not have the culture of a
future-ready organisation that can adapt to fast-paced
change tomorrow. In empowering your leaders and
employees to develop their creative potential, in the
broadest sense of the word, innovation will start to seep
through the whole of your organisation, embedding a
culture that will increase the likelihood of you creating
impactful value out of new ideas.
June 2019|18

C
hromis POS, the open
sourced point of sale
solution provider started its
voyage in 2013, whilst the founder of
the organization was looking out to
help one of his friends to replace his
cash register. Both of them had some
requirements that they wished to
meet; one of the big ones was cost of
ownership. It was at this point John
the founder of Chromis stumbled on
to a number of open source products.
However none of these met the needs
completely. So he started to write
modifications for one, after a period
of time John wrote a kitchen screen
module and that was really the start
of Chromis.
In 2015 the decision was made to
create John’s own fork of the
software and Chromis was officially
born. John doesn’t prefer to call
Chromis a company and asserts that
it is more of a project of love. The
organization does not have an
income stream and there are no paid
employees. In fact it is supported
entirely on the forum by friends and
users from around the world.
The Guardian Angle
John Lewis, the Founder of
Chromis was born and completed his
education from Stafford, England. He
has been working for a large cinema
chain since completing his “A”
levels. During his stint at the cinema
chain he has held multiple roles with
the business. When it comes to IT,
John thinks he was lucky in some
ways. He encountered his first
computer, an old English Electric
main frame which was owned by a
local polytechnic whilst still in
education. Later in 1982 John
became the proud owner of his first
computer, a Sinclair ZX81. It was at
that point he became interested in
programming, writing in assembly
language, he even had some games
on the ZX Spectrum release by one
of the budget labels. John eventually
followed this with a move into
hardware, repairing home computers
of the 80’s for the local shops, all of
this whilst working full time.
Prior to starting Chromis, John
introduced a number of
enhancements to an open source
POS. These were initially started to
meet the needs of a friend, it also
meant he had to get back into
programming and learn a new
language. It was these changes that
provided a wealth of interest, in the
features being added. He eventually
rose to the challenges on the forum
for feature requests and gained
recognition on the forum. While he
had not had any impact on the
commercial products, John would
like to think that those changes and
introductions of new features have
influenced new forks of the project.
Shaping the Journey
According to the organization, the
growing number of users is a big
achievement; it is this user base that
increases the desire to want to
provide improvements to the
application. Still, one of the biggest
regrets of the founder John are, not
starting to work on user manual
earlier, there has never been a manual
available, even for the original
project from which Chromis was
forked. However, this is now on
going and is a lesson learned. Once
complete, it should make the system
even easier to setup. On the other
hand, John thinks he should have
certainly look at how he handled
code created by others, following
issues once imported in to the main
project, which is entirely based on
his past experience. He also added,
“At the same time I would also have
changed some of the database types
supported sooner; it beacame
difficult maintaining differences
between them.”
Retail
The
Companieswith Most
Solutions 2019
Changing the POS Industry since Inception
Chromis POS
June 2019|20

Also when it comes to sustaining competency John is
working round the clock in order to add features which
will meet the needs of the consumers and improve the
flexibility and ease of use of the product.
Painting the Picture of the Future
When it comes to the picture of the future, Chromis
would like to be in a position to spend more time
working on the product. And as the market changes,
Chromis will eventually change the way it works, to
allow more interaction with e-Commerce sites.
Client Feedback
“We are a family business of 35 years, and felt that we
needed to change with the times. John helped source and
recode the software to suit our needs. That was back in
2013, once Chromis was released in 2015, we moved
over to that. It is great we can now get reports of all
kinds, making things like checking best sellers simple.
We have had no problems in training the new staff we
had to employ when we moved to bigger premises; it is
so easy for them to use.”- Phil Lawton – Kidsgrove
Tropicals
“Having recently started in business, I need a till system
of some kind, the biggest problem was cost. I started with
a small Casio till but soon became disillusioned. I
emailed John when a friend of mine mentioned about
looking at epos and gave me the Chromis web site
details. After a few emails and advice on hardware,
which john also helped me source, I had the software
installed and running all within a month of the first
email. All I can say is great and thanks.”- Alex
Leishman – Vanillis
Chromis is a dynamic point
of sale application that
offers exibility and ease of
use, but best of all it is free
to own and use.
‘‘
‘‘
|June 2019 21
John Lewis
Founder

Printing
33Innovations
in the Field of
Printing
Business
In the year 1450, when Blacksmith Johannes Gutenberg
ﬁrst introduced a movable type press in the German
city of Mainz, a printing revolution had got erupted.
This invention encouraged more people to proliferate and
distribute their creative/informative ideas though printed
texts. Sooner, plethora of work related to literature,
religious scriptures, scientiﬁc papers, ontological treaties,
law texts among other started publishing out in the
European region which later got adopted globally at large
scale and helped individuals and others to promote/sell their
ideas.
This printing revolution still considered as one of the most
important event in the history of printing and for the
humankind as a whole. With the passage of time many
other inventions have been taken places that have boosted
the printing business at large.
Here we have enlisted some of the recent
developments that are worth mentioning, and
which are also considered as a turning point
for the arena of printing business.
June 2019|24

environment friendly. In this technology, the ink is not
made of plastic and other damaging petroleum or fossil
fuels; instead ‘water’ here is act as the main solvent and
thus makes it an environment friendly printing technology.
Moreover, what are making this technology scalable and
popular are its other fascinating features famously includes
its fine print quality and affordability over the other
prevailing printing technologies.
Its solvents decrease the time and heat necessary to absorb
the ink film on fabric and instead of just spreading on the
outer layer of the fabric, its ink flow deep into the fabric
and create a much better look and ultimately a much better
end-user experience. Further, water based inks are thinner
and you can actually print with higher precision to give a
good texture as compared to thicker inks like plastisol.
Moreover, the increased softness and flexibility of water-
based prints have the potential to win customers heart every
time when they touch a fabric printed using this technology.
Many leading organization are considering this technology
over plastisol and it is just the matter of time before this
technology becomes an industry standard in the printing
business.
Conductive Ink:
Invention of conductive ink is one the greatest milestones in
the business of printing and it has the potential to change
thefuture of printing business as well.
What's unique in this technology is its ‘ink’ which contains
conductive materials like silver nanoparticles or conductive
polymers which gives them the ability to conduct
electricity. This conductive (Silver) ink has multiple uses
today including printing RFID tags as used in modern
transit tickets, they can be used to improvise or repair
circuits on printed circuit boards as well. Although, this
technology is in early stage and its mainstream adoption
may probably takes several years but it is a promising
technique which can be effectively used in many different
applications including the creation of interactive posters,
billboards, and other advertising materials.
Interestingly, this technology also holds promise to play
sound just by touching a paper or connect you to your
phone app just by interacting with a poster on the wall that
is linked to the app. Moreover, it has the same capacitive
sensing technology that is present in modern day electronic
devices like tablets, smartphones among others.
Nano Printing:
3D printing has witnessed many remarkable breakthroughs
in recent years, Nano printing is one such innovation. Due
to this cutting-edge printing technology it is now possible to
print and integrate tiny components directly on to the
integrated circuits include micro-lenses onto photonic
circuits and deformable structures on MEMS actuators.
Interestingly, what was a dream some decades ago has
become a reality with this technology as it is now possible
to print microscopic objects with complex geometry and
sizes of nanometres to several millimetres. Such things can
be printed on a single printing step and that too on a scale
which was not possible before. Such innovative change of
on-printing brings new perspectives for developing nano
and microscopic 3D component in a hassle free manner.
Moreover, its application has significance in many vital
areas including Artificial Organs, Tissue Engineering, Stem
cell-based Regenerative Medicine and Therapy, Fabrication
of Nano Scale Devices among other. Customers also reap
huge benefit by utilizing this technology as it provides great
precision, stability, and support 3D custom design at large
scale.
How this Technology Works?
In this printing technology, Nanoscribe’s Photonic
Professional GT system uses the technique of two-photon
polymerization. In this process a laser gets expose to a
photosensitive resin by a high-numerical aperture objective
that too in a controlled trajectory following CAD design.
The interesting thing here is that the material gets solidified
only in the laser focused spot and thus allows printing the
exact 3D structure with submicron features. Such
advancements have expanded the use of this technique for
printing pre-manufactured circuits and opens new ways for
executing on-chip printing as well. Nanotechnology for
printing – is truly innovative as it alters materials at the
atomic and molecular level.
Water-based Printing:
Many printing technologies use inks made from harmful
chemical substances which creates negative impact on the
printer, wearer and the environment at large. Usage of harsh
chemicals and toxic waste also always keep various
regulatory agencies on vigil. Therefore, there was a dire
need of a technique which can do a fine printing by
minimizing the bad effects on environment at large. The
birth of water-based printing fulfilled that need.
The innovation of water-based printing has started a new
era in printing space which is hugely considered as
Editor’s Choice
|June 2019 25

When the Goal is to Help Customers Succeed
With a mission to help
enterprises across
multiple industries better
understand and engage customers,
Cloud4Wi stepped into the market in
the year 2013. Its application suite
provides brick and mortar businesses
with accurate insights into customers’
in-store behavior, along with
powerful, location-based marketing
tools to engage them in meaningful
ways, helping drive revenue in
unprecedented ways.
Since the beginning, the founders of
the organization understood that
brick and mortar businesses were
missing a huge opportunity to
connect with their customers. Most
businesses already had the WiFi
infrastructure in place and they could
have leveraged it to better understand
and engage their customers. At the
end, they were looking forward to
say that WiFi could play a key role in
transforming the customer
experience.
Soon the organization was able to
raise Series A funding with United
Ventures, a European venture
capitalist company, which helped it
to develop a powerful and robust
guest WiFi platform. Then in 2017
the company closed $ 11.5 million
Series B financing round.
Ground Breaking Solutions
Cloud4Wi’s AI-driven application
suite enables retailers to easily
collect and manage the identity of
their customers, in compliance with
privacy regulations (for example,
GDPR), and unearth in real time the
behaviors of customers within their
stores. With this in-depth knowledge
of who the customers are and how
they behave, retailers can empower
their marketing strategies to reach the
right audience, at exactly the right
place and time, and through the right
channel.
Cloud4Wi strives to be a data-driven
SaaS company with a customer
success approach (land, expand,
renew) that empowers global
retailers to:
Ÿ Get to know their customers,
turning them from anonymous
visitors into loyal shoppers;
Ÿ Understand offline customer
behaviors with powerful
analytics;
Ÿ Bridge offline and online worlds
to deliver better customer
experiences.
The Massively Experienced Leader
With the background in marketing,
technology, and economics, with
experience in the media-telco
industry with a focus on next-
generation networks and services
Andrea Calcagno serves as the
Chairman, CEO and Co-founder of
Cloud4Wi. Till date he has led over
50 projects in this space, and has
written multiple articles and reports
when it comes to advanced wireless
technologies. Calcagno kick started
his career at Telecom Italia Labs in
Turin. While serving for Telecom
Italia labs, he performed advanced
research and development activities
on mobile access networks, receiving
international patents on mobile
broadband architectures. He has also
played multiple key roles in several
Italian start-ups. Later in 2003 he
founded WiTech, where he served as
CEO and EVP. Calcagno holds a
Master’s degree in
telecommunications engineering
from University of Pisa.
Retail
The
Companieswith Most
Solutions 2019
Cloud4Wi
June 2019|26

We empower our clients to
bridge the online and ofine
worlds, through our cutting-
edge location services.
‘
Rethinking the Concept of Store
According to the organization, personalization of
experience will be termed as the number one trend.
Shoppers nowadays expect to live compelling sharing
experience while they are looking for something on the
online store, or any store. Nowadays stores are becoming
a place where customers can spend time by listening to
music, eat great food, touch, feel and play with the
product and above all, hang out with their friends,
community and family. Which means now retailers must
rethink their concept of store.
As per Cloud4Wi, in this re-designing process, retailers
must seek inspiration from Generation Z. This
generation is tech –innate; they can effortlessly “swim”
in the digital world, and they are used to using
technology in order to personalize their experiences.
Despite their young ages, they already hold
unprecedented influence over family purchasing
decisions and wield enormous economic power of their
own. There are about 2.5 billion Gen Zs out of the 7.5
billion people currently in the world, and their spending
power at close to $200 billion annually when you factor
in their influence on parental or household purchases.
Future Roadmap
When it comes to the future, Cloud4Wi believes, the
evolutionary path in the retail market is well defined.
Andrea Calcagno
Chairman, CEO & Co-founder
Retailers must prepare themselves for the unified
commerce if they want to stay ahead of the game.
Cloud4Wi firmly believes that the physical stores still
play a key role in delivering new meaningful customer-
centric experiences. As an organization, it is working
hard to provide retailers with the best-in-class
technologies, capable of building 360-degree customer
views to bridge the gap between online and offline.
Testimonial
“Cloud4Wi’s solution enables us to understand who our
customers are and how they behave in the stores while
respecting their privacy. Thanks to this in-depth
knowledge, we will be able to deliver compelling and
much more personalized experiences”. Lorenzo Bertelli,
Owner and CDO, The Prada Group.
‘
‘‘
|June 2019 27

If you are an MPS provider, you may have realized the
“single brand from a single vendor” solution is falling
out of favor with end customers. So, what has changed
and is MPS a sustainable offering?
As of 2018, we are 20-years into the bell curve for MPS.
For many years, prospects were first time buyers who
viewed their environments as messy. Printers and copiers
were everywhere from different manufacturers and vendors.
Control was distributed among departments, Facilities, and
IT. Acquisitions methods were just as diverse and included
purchases, leases, contracts from local dealers and national
supplies resellers.
Print was a big mystery to customers. They had no idea
how many devices they had, how many pages they were
producing or how much they were spending. They needed a
clear picture of what they had and potential solutions. Then
they struggled with satisfying all stakeholders and gaining
consensus on a final solution. Projects were time
consuming, political and even risky for the project lead.
You played a valuable role as an MPS vendor. In the
customer’s eyes, you were the expert who taught them
something new and showed them a path forward. You
offered expertise and people to find out what they have
today and were able to develop a complex solution. The
journey took many months from concept to assessment to
proposal. You earned the role of trusted advisor so it was
only natural that the customer would see a “single brand
from a single vendor” as the best available solution.
Pricing changed. You wrapped up the solution into bundled
pricing that simplified costs for the end customer and
enabled you to shield pricing for hardware, maintenance
and supplies. After all, there were managed services
wrapped around all products so the customer agreed with
the bundled pricing format. Bundled pricing enabled you to
work with margins behind the curtain.
Come decision time, the customer realized that
Implementation would affect every user and the potential
cost savings put it near the top for cost-savings initiatives.
These two factors elevated the project to the most senior
management levels for approval and executive sponsorship.
The sales cycle got longer but the project became more
important to more people. The final result was often a case
study of successful transformation from a messy
environment to a lean, managed print environment.
So, what changed in recent years? The MPS market had
certainly matured. Customers had lived through the
transformation from unmanaged to managed. With the end
of their first MPS contract came a new perspective and
different buyer attitude. The customer was no longer sick
and in dire need of expertise. Their fleet was no longer
messy. Devices had been consolidated and processes
streamlined. Customers had clear visibility to what they
devices they had, how many pages they produced, and the
total cost of ownership. The mystery was solved.
Your role changed. In many cases, the customer was more
experienced in real-world MPS than your sales team. Sales
people struggled to teach customers something new,
something of significant potential value. Talk of potential
cost savings by switching vendors was no longer
compelling – the big savings had already been taken. The
MPS story from one vendor sounded the same as the other
IS THEIS THE
SINGLE BRANDSINGLE BRAND
Dead in MPS?Dead in MPS?
June 2019|28

vendor – in fact, the story sounded exactly the same as the
one told years earlier by their current MPS vendor.
Now the end customer was asking about your ability to
support their existing fleet, to do repairs and provide
consumables. The potential for placing your new hardware
was not clear. These new MPS opportunities felt like they
belonged more to the vendor service and inside sales teams
than to the account sales department. The customer was
now clearly in control and driving the sales process.
In the past few years, many dealers have exited the MPS
market and refocused on their traditional selling motions.
They found MPS operations different and costly. Sales reps
were harder to train and it took longer to get them hitting
quota numbers. So, like a rubber band, dealers re-focused
on their core competency. So, what does the future look like
for those dealers wishing to stay relevant in the MPS
market?
It is time to look inward to tackle five key obstacles to
growth and profitability in MPS:
• Redefine your value and how you will educate the
customer
• Define a strategy for pricing and supporting both OEM
and compatible supplies
• Justify managed services independent of products
• Learn how to participate in an open sourcing model
• Decide if a fragmented customer environment and
sourcing model is good business
The days of single brand and single vendor are gone.
Sourcing methods have changed dramatically for
everything – including print – and the pace of change is
accelerating. Vendors must rethink the value provided and
how to educate the customer. MPS vendors will still spend
months doing assessments and proposals only to be faced
with the purchasing process that would unbundle pricing
and force transparency to price by product category. The
decision then is can you re-invent your practice to enable
you to participate in this new arena and win – profitably.
Ben Harris is the Founder of
Harris Technologies, Inc. Ben
Harris enjoyed a 15 year career in
corporate sales, selling and
implementing large contracts to
Fortune 500 companies around
the country. In 2006, he decided to
begin a new journey, leaving the
big office and tie to start up his
own firm. After years of
perseverance and dedication,
Harris Technologies has become a
recognized leader in their space.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ben Harris
Founder
Harris Technologies
Leadership Column
|June 2019 29

Back in the 1990s, the UK
witnessed the foundation of
Eurostop, a company
offering complete EPOS and retail
software solutions.
Cut to 2019, the organization
progressed rapidly to become a major
force in the industry, offering
solutions to many fashion, footwear,
jewelry, and general merchandise
retailers.
Eurostop’s experience and
understanding of these retail sectors
has enabled the organization to
develop well established systems that
allow its customers to manage their
merchandise and business processes
with efficiency and ease. In the last
decade, Eurostop has successfully
expanded into Asia, and established
offices in Shanghai, Xiamen,
Singapore and Hong Kong. These
offices cater to the Asia Pacific
market and help to service its global
customer base.
When Dreams Come True
While growing up in Malaysia,
Richard Loh the CEO of Eurostop
dreamed of becoming an
entrepreneur. At the age of 18, he
joined the Graduate Trainee
Programme at Bata Shoes,
progressed to store manager, area
manager and to head office as a
merchandiser. Richard credits his
retail training for the discipline in
later life that enabled him to
successfully develop and build his
own business.
In 1970, Richard left Malacca for the
UK where at Lady at Lord John, he
rose to Merchandise Director within
three years. Realizing the importance
of IT, Richard then joined Honeywell
Bull as a retail consultant. Here, his
energy and passion enabled him to
build relationships with colleagues
that were to join him to make
Eurostop the company it is today.
Harnessing the Power of Clever
Tech
Richard firmly believes in remaining
agile and adapting to changing
consumer behavior and trends in
order to remain relevant, all the while
providing a consistent core service,
which is based on accurate data and
stock. Eurostop is now looking at
clever use of technology to enhance
the in-store experience, using tech
and data to provide an on demand,
mobile service for consumers.
Eurostop’s newest disruptive
technology is an in-store consumer
shopping app called MyShoppr™.
This consumer app was designed to
merge offline and online seamlessly,
embracing the trend for mobile
shopping with the physical bricks
and mortar experience. Another key
development is the real time
fulfillment capabilities of the
Eurostop solution, where retailers
can fulfill orders from any location
within the business, ensuring that
customers receive their orders
swiftly.
Richard’s experience and enthusiasm
for the retail sector, and the
challenges that it faces, has shaped
Eurostop’s success. Strategy is a mix
of listening to customers, and
looking at the wider market, to
develop well-established systems to
streamline the management of
merchandise and business processes.
It’s about putting the consumers’
experiences first and foremost.
Lessons Learnt while Staying at
the Forefront
Richard has worked with multiple
Tier 1 retailers over the years, and
understands that a positive customer
experience underpins every
successful sale – evident today by
Eurostop’s own business
development and philosophy. With
the blistering pace of technological
advancements, Richard continues to
keep Eurostop at the forefront of the
market with his drive and
enthusiasm, currently focusing on
mobile technology and omni-
channel.
Richard is also actively involved in
leading the firm’s expanding
operation in China where Eurostop’s
largest customer, the sports brand
Anta Sportswear, has more than
12,000 retail stores. Having achieved
many of his goals, Richard now goes
Retail
The
Companieswith Most
Solutions 2019
Helping the Retail Sector since Inception
Eurostop
June 2019|32

out of his way to give others opportunities and help them
fulfill their potential.
Picture of the Future
When it comes to the future, Eurostop listens to its
customers, industry commentators and Richard has some
strong opinions of his own, as to where the future of
retail lies. Keeping an open mind as to what is possible is
the key to maintain and develop any business, and the
same is true for retail. Eurostop will continue to explore
the possibilities of new technology, by always asking;
‘How can this make the customer experience better?’
Also, the organization’s integrated suite of software is
constantly developing, and as a long-standing retail
systems provider, Eurostop is well placed to support its
retail partners as they grow, with the experience and
infrastructure to support their expansion both locally and
globally.
Clients’ Feedback
“The Eurostop team did a great job working with our
other third party vendors to get the seamless customer
experience. Everything works more smoothly,
transactions are faster and customer service is improved.
They are a truly collaborative vendor and never shy
away from their responsibilities. Their approach has
always been ‘how can we fix that or make that happen?’
We really do trust Eurostop to look after our business,”-
M&S International
“Eurostop has made replenishment and fulfilment
seamless. The automatic requests save us so much time,
we can share stock easily across the warehouse and
stores, and fulfil customer orders much faster. The
resulting commercial success with our multichannel
business is one of the key reasons why we won Drapers
Independent Award.”- Base Fashion
“Retail systems designed by retailers for
retailers” - Eurostop’s EPOS, stock control
and head ofce merchandising system
and business intelligence software have
all been designed with traditional
merchandise ow processes in mind.
‘‘
‘‘ Richard Loh
CEO
|June 2019 33

Critical Importance of
Digital Marketing
in the growth of Start-ups
Industry Pointers
June 2019|34

online world makes it
possible to reach out to
the maximum
audience.
Digital marketing is
vital for building brand
image, creating traffic, more
sales and gaining loyal
customers. The sphere of
digital marketing is much
larger than traditional
marketing strategies and most
importantly it is cost-effective.
Digital marketing is a disruptive
technology which provides the
complete customer service starting
from the product description to
customer support.
Accomplishment of Businesses is in
converting generated traffic into
subscribers. Conversion rate is the
most important parameter of
Business success. Digital Marketing
plays vital role in great conversion
rate. This is the reason most
entrepreneurs are giving priority to
digital advertising tools to have
maximum conversion rate.
Digital marketing uses a variety of
information coupled with organized
tools to analyze customer liking and
their behavior, which helps to
perceive new trend, see new
opportunities and gaining future
insights.
Various Digital Marketing platforms
or technologies include Search
Engine Optimization (SEO), Social
Media Optimization (SMO), Search
Engine Marketing (SEM), Content
Management System (CMS), Email
Marketing, Social Media Networks,
Content Marketing, Mobile
Marketing, Mobile Apps and Classic
Apps, Blogs and different video
channels. All these platforms operate
in Internet Medium. There are other
Running a start-up is not as
easy as it may seem. It
requires giving attention to
many things. One needs to perceive
the evolving trends in the business
world and adapt the business
strategies accordingly so as to reach
out to a larger audience. One should
also have an entrepreneurship sense
and competence to thrive in a
constantly changing business world.
We live in an ultra –competitive
world. If one does not evolve our
strategy to reach out to people
according to the changing trends then
force of the time has the capacity to
make one obsolete. That is the reason
it is essential to adapt to the changing
world and changing technologies. By
being part of the solutions to the
problems in the world one can make
the world a better place.
The digital world we live in today,
traditional marketing strategies are
almost becoming obsolete. Today,
customers use online platforms to get
information on practically
everything. Digital Marketing helps
the startups to have their online
presence and market themselves in a
better way.
Digital marketing is important for
start-up nowadays because it is a
kind of successful business strategy
to shine out. It is the very efficient
route to reach out the larger audience
by showcasing the services and
products in the best possible manner.
The most valuable benefit of Digital
Marketing for the startups is that they
can maintain good communication
with their target audience by
regularly informing them about the
events and happenings in their
company at a very minimal cost
through online platforms. The
positively built image of the products
and services of the start-up in the
classic
methods
of Digital
Marketing such as TV advertisement,
Radio Medium & SMS. All these
various Internet and Classic Digital
Marketing platforms create rapid and
viable communications with the
maximum and desired audiences and
helps in ensuring higher conversion
rates. Due to these higher conversion
rates it becomes possible to generate
great revenues. These various
platforms have the great potential to
ensure good communication with
consumers.
Digital Marketing opens growth
options for small and medium
businesses also in very good
proportion. The digital marketing
modes are more customizable and
cheaper. The presence of one’s brand
and service on various platforms
gives the option to consumers to rate
business services as per their
experience level. The favorable
feedback given by a satisfied
consumer helps in generating new
customers and increasing more
conversion rates. This is the most
important benefit of online presence
of one’s brand.
Strategic digital marketing helps
start-ups growth in many ways such
as:
Ÿ Global Trade Possibility
Ÿ Cost-effective Marketing
Ÿ Image and Brand formation
|June 2019 35

Ÿ Fast Communication
Ÿ More Online Visibility, Name,
Fame
Ÿ More contribution and more
impact
Ÿ More Revenue, Status,
Reputation, Growth, Prestige
Essentially Digital marketing
strategy helps in new customer
acquisitions, brand visualization,
growth, more revenue-generating
possibilities, better customer service,
and cost-effective global presence.
Digital Marketing is the heart and
soul in the growth of the start-ups
and is the best way to reduce costs on
marketing without reducing the
outreach of the products and
services. Therefore, when a start-up
creates its business plan, it must
include a solid digital marketing
strategy.
The future of digital marketing
appears incredibly bright at present.
This battle to promote one’s own
brand is possible in a more impactful
way by using Digital Marketing.
Digital Marketing can help different
brands create big impact on
consumers.
To survive in an ultra-competitive
business world is only possible if one
can plan and implement an effective,
unique and pragmatic digital
marketing strategy for one’s business
to make a huge impact on the
maximum customers.
Appropriate understanding and
proficient inclusion of best digital
marketing processes and such trends
has the capacity to ensure the
sustainable, holistic and economic
growth of start-ups and even already
existent businesses.
June 2019|36

Transforming Merchandising through Cloud Computing
Consumer Goods Manufacturers
and Grocers nowadays are
deliberately employing
disruptive technologies to meet the
heightened consumer’s demand and
adding agility to their services. A new
generation of computing is disrupting
how consumer goods are
merchandised, displayed, priced and
stocked on shelves. Lines between
manufacturers, distributors, retailers
and consumers continue to transform
and require manufacturers to deploy a
new set of solutions to thrive in a direct
to consumer economy.
Packaged Goods Industry is facing
numerous challenges; Digital
consumer is one of them. Digital
consumer is shaping the move to
Omni-channel which empowers the
consumer with more products choices,
reviews, information on promotions,
and product availability with
traditional physical shelves and
digitally with CPG companies directly.
To provide best possible services to
support multiple channels of
distribution, companies are adopting
customer-relationship management
software built to suit vertical specific
requirements and enable companies to
engage with its potential customers in
better ways. To gain efficiency in
business operations this feat needs a
precise CRM solution. Recognized by
leading analyst firms including Gartner
and industry publications Consumer
Goods Technology, Ivy Mobility is a
CRM solution provider which is
powering the CPG industry by
delivering applications through
multiple cloud apps.
Evolving Vision
Founded with a vision to develop
preferable software for the mobile
workforce Ivy Mobility launched into
the market in 2002. Since its inception
many multinational companies have
trusted on Ivy solutions for a wide
range of work functions using mobile
device technology. These best in class
mobile device technologies have
helped many companies to increase
revenue, shorten sales cycles, improve
customer service, and enhancing
employee productivity. Five years ago,
the company decided to focus on cloud
solutions for the Consumer Packaged
Goods Industry. With this new
approach the company quickly
introduced new products, for Retail
Execution and Direct Store Delivery,
and are currently available using a
Software as a Service (SaaS) model.
An Instrumental Leadership
Rajiv Prabhakar, Founder and
Director of Ivy Mobility have a
extensive experience in consulting and
resolving business problems. Rajiv is
instrumental in delivering solutions to
transform the sales, and distribution
operations of CPG companies, enabled
by cloud solutions. Before founding
Ivy, Rajiv has delivered his expert
guidance from Gap Inc Direct, Internet
Movie Retailing pioneer Reel.com,
CMOS Soft in the Bay Area to
Pyramid Business Systems in
Singapore. In addition to this, Rajiv
has advised over 100 businesses to
increase market share by solving
challenges with product placement,
stocking, pricing, and offer
promotional discounts to drive more
category performance.
Innovative Offerings
By way of new technologies, Ivy’s
vision is to be the finest customer
centric provider in mobile solutions,
and empower the customers through
software to improve work by using any
device, at any time and in anyplace.
Ivy seeks to digitalize all processes
related to the information flow for
route to market, for consumer good
product manufacturers and distributors,
via a Software‐as‐a‐Service (SaaS) and
artificial intelligence available in the
cloud.
Cutting-edge Capabilities
Ivy Industry Cloud is a single unified
platform for Consumer Package Goods
organizations and includes sales,
delivery, merchandising, distribution
management, and analytics. To make it
more reliable the company is
embedding Artificial Intelligence to
power automation and insights. With it,
Retail
The
Companieswith Most
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June 2019|38

Ivy is rst to market the
Industry Cloud for
Consumer Goods.‘
customers can predict which SKU should go on which shelf
and in what quantity.
The company has developed a solution for industry-specific
business processes for the Consumer Goods Industry; the
Industry Cloud. Its applications are available on the
Salesforce AppExchange Marketplace. Today, Ivy’s
solutions enable over 45 manufacturers and distributors in
more than 29 countries to realize the benefits of modern
cloud-based architectures and mobile applications for their
route to market business functions.
While describing about its customer relationship
management the company officials state that “We offer best
in class professional services and product support to our
customers. The customer relationship management
solutions empower the customers to increase the
productivity of their field sales force.” The retail execution
solution enables customers to transform operations by
reducing out of stock situations and improving promotion
performances. This is the unique capability to support a
global enterprise with a single system by adding Artificial
Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in the
applications.
Industry-specific Solutions
Ivy’s solutions provide industry-specific process support,
robust functionality which includes built-in workflow
processes, rules, and best practices specific to the Consumer
Goods Industry. Everything from the user interface,
support for industry regulations, to the product’s
nomenclature is industry specific. Businesses are relying
more heavily on vertical solutions to address the demands
of current economic climates and are looking forward to
take advantage of the next generation of the technology.
Ivy serves some of the leading consumer goods companies
Rajiv Prabhakar
Founder & Director
in the world. It builds industry-specific software delivered
in the cloud and offers multi-functional capabilities to meet
the vertical needs of consumer goods companies. It helps
organizations to overcome challenges in routes to market
the customers face today and tomorrow.
Ivy solutions use the Salesforce Platform, combined with
their own proprietary technology. In addition, to effectively
support customers the company offers the option of using
Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. It has designed
specific applications for mobile device platforms; which
support Android phones and tablets, Apple iPads and
phones. The company also intendeds on developing more
capabilities to support Windows tablets and phones too. Ivy
believes the data generated from its industry-specific
applications can provide unique insights that can be
incorporated into its solutions, further increasing the value
of solutions.”
‘ ‘‘
|June 2019 39

One Stop Shop for Professionals on the Go
The world of fashion and retail
is going through continuous
changes; it seems as if as soon
as anyone gets a new system set up, it
changes again. There is more
confusion than there are remedies. Old
timers, as well as new fashion houses,
have either down sized or completely
closed their doors in the recent years.
Every time someone reads an article
from so-called professionals, they
notice even more emphasis on
customer service; although customer
service is an important part of the
business, by now it is pretty much a
standard procedure throughout high
end retailers.
If we review all businesses in general,
what we notice is that those who are
succeeding, at least comparing to most
others, have certain elements in
common and one in particular: value.
Operations, such as TJ Maxx, are
growing and forcing most other
department stores to become irrelevant.
Major specialty European chains, such
as ZARA or H&M, deliver fashion, a
cool place to shop, as well as value.
They are taking market share from
their U.S. competitors season after
season. Most U.S. stores, up until the
closures began a couple of years ago,
were forced by Wall Street to grow
without any concern for profitability.
There is a very big conflict with most
top executive’s interests and actual
business models. They are expected to
grow the top line first, so that the
chains and other retailing majors
continue over saturating all U.S.
markets with their foot prints; only to
be rewarded on the short-term, while
their tenure may last. When they left,
they also left a less manageable and
more challenging business for the next
group to navigate; they kicked the can
down the road.
The biggest challenge for the larger
companies is the fact that everyone
wants to tweak the business, rather
than reviewing all nuts and bolts of
their model. Now, discounters must
give department stores a run for their
money, and some Europeans are doing
the same to U.S. chains; no one is
willing to take a major risk, they are
not even looking at those issues and
who can blame them for being scared?
As for the smaller “mom and pop
shops,” unless they can come up with
something other than trying to buy
better or give a better customer service,
their years will be numbered in all
major markets. There was a time where
there were a few boutiques on most
New York City blocks, but today, aside
from just a few, they nearly are all
gone. Those models would likely still
work for suburbs where those major
chains do not find it profitable to have
a presence.
|June 2019 41
Expert’s Insights

Technology has forced retailers and businesses
to look into e-commerce, however, most have
not yet discovered how to make it profitable.
With online return rates being an average 35%,
restocking and putting items back into their
original shape could become a labor-intensive
process; all assuming the items are unused upon
their return. Shopping online, while great for
technology purchases, gives no personal
immediate gratification. Shopping for fashion
has been an outing for many individuals, to
bond with friends and family. We keep hearing
different ratios of numbers of online selling
versus brick and mortar selling. According to
the co-author of Conversion Optimization,
Khalid Saleh, in 2018, 8.9% of all retail sales in
the U.S. came from online selling. This meant
there were still another 91% of sales that went
About the
Author
At the age of 24, fashion
designer Bahram Hakakian
opened his first retail location,
BARAMI, with a vision of giving
women what they deserve out
of fashion. Now, founder
Bahram Hakakian, aka
BARAMI, and his three
daughters are proud to
announce the new direction of
their fashion empire, by
creating a wholesale collection
as Patrizia Luca. Their
collection is being sold within a
wide variety of specialty stores,
to brick and mortar operations; a rather large number. If we also take into
account that between 20,000 to 25,000 stores have closed their doors in
the past few years and split those sales through their remaining stores, the
potential becomes even greater.
ZARA, and its counterparts, have effected every country in the globe. All
this, while registering success and growth year after year. They deliver
fashion at a good price, however, they are focused mostly on a trimmer
woman and a younger generation. American women are sized, on average,
between a fourteen and a sixteen; most cannot shop that type of product.
This leaves a space open for fashion in the U.S. that is made for
individuals actually residing in the U.S.
What needs to be looked at, is an exciting collection that will not be all
over specialty chains and is done for the U.S. market. Most U.S. stores
have their customers trained to buy when they are running sales; when the
merchandise is marked up merely to be marked down. In other value
oriented chains, they market at the price that they want to sell and when
they run a sale for a limited time, the stores get packed. We often notice
that most of these stores remove their staple items from their sales floor
during sale period, while adding other leftover, or older items, to the sales
floor. Thus, changing a customer’s perception and retraining them to buy
at full price will become a daunting task that will put most chains in a no-
win situation.
One would like to assume the landscape will change within the next
decade or so, since we will be evolving as each year passes.
Barami Hakakian
BARAMI stores
June 2019|42

Based in Burlington, less than 15
miles outside of Boston,
Profitect is a software firm
offering an award-winning prescriptive
analytics solution. The solution
uniquely processes data to
automatically identify opportunities for
improvement, and provides a
prescriptive action informing the
appropriate stakeholder(s), in plain
language, how to act on each
opportunity. The vision of Profitect is
to reduce the amount of reports that
inundate retail and CPG employees, in
addition to being inefficient,
inaccurate, and prone to personal bias.
Profitect also aims to empower
employees “at the edge” in order to
make more informed decisions by
telling them what they should know,
instead of sending them a report to
analyze, and prescribing the actions
they should take. This quickly and
consistently improves sales and
margins while reducing labor costs.
A Closer Look at Prescriptive
Analytics
Profitect’s award-winning prescriptive
analytics solution leverages pattern
detection, pragmatic Artificial
Intelligence (AI), and machine learning
to identify opportunities within data
that impact sales and margin. The
organization analyzes data to identify
areas for improvement including:
inventory and pricing inaccuracies,
inconsistent on-shelf availability,
unsellable merchandise, vendor non-
compliance, and assortment
discrepancies. Profitect then delivers
these opportunities to the appropriate
stakeholder(s) with simple, plain-text
corrective actions for resolving them.
The solution’s machine learning and
AI capabilities help the system “learn
from” each outcome to hone future
results. It is designed to serve every
department across the retail and CPG
value chain, including supply chain,
store operations, loss prevention,
marketing, merchandising, finance,
planning and allocation, and
information technology.
Consistently Understanding Clients'
Needs and Objectives
Profitect’s Customer Success team
holds frequent meetings and check-ins
with customers to ensure they are
consistently realizing value and their
needs and objectives are being met.
Additionally, the company holds
quarterly calls and hosts a yearly user
conference, Prescriptive Analytics
Collaborative Training (PACT), to
ensure communication and
collaboration across its customer
community. The organization also
routinely hosts meetings of its Product
Management Committee, which is a
select group of customers and
Profitect’s own Research &
Development team who share feedback
to refine the company's award-winning
prescriptive analytics solution.
Profitect’s team attends 20+ global
industry conferences and events every
year in order to stay up-to-date on the
latest trends and challenges affecting
retail and CPG. The CEO himself sits
on several of the Retail Industry
Leaders Association (RILA)’s Leaders
Councils, which offer further insights
into what retailers and CPG
organizations need from an analytics
provider. Profitect uses everything it
learns to hone and refine its solution.
The Veteran Leader
As the CEO of Profitect, Guy Yehiav
is responsible for setting the
organization's growth and leadership
strategy. Guy is a 25-year veteran of
the supply chain industry, and has held
senior leadership positions at Oracle
after founding Demantra US, which
was acquired by Oracle in 2006. He is
also a frequent contributor to Forbes,
Money Inc, Retail Touchpoints,
Women's Wear Daily, RIS News, Total
Retail, The Profit Chain, and Loss
Prevention Magazine. Additionally, he
is proud to sit on several leadership
councils. Guy received his Bachelor's
degree in Computer Science &
Industrial Management from Shenkar
College of Israel and completed his
MBA in Entrepreneurship from Babson
College in Massachusetts.
While working in the supply chain
industry, Guy learned three important
lessons that he brought with him to
Profitect:
Ÿ Offer an efficient deployment: He
believes one needs to offer their
customers an implementation that
takes days, not months or a year.
Ÿ Keep solutions simple: According
to Guy, overcomplicated solutions
Retail
The
Companieswith Most
Solutions 2019
Retail & CPG’s Premier Prescriptive Analytics Provider
Protect
June 2019|44

Ÿ are not scalable, so he made sure Profitect could be used
by anyone and everyone and anywhere, whether part-
time or full-time, elderly or young, skilled or unskilled.
Ÿ Support services should always be free: Vendors can't
nickel-and-dime their customers, Guy says. Profitect is
committed to helping its customers succeed, and that's
not something that should be charged as an added
service. The vendor and the customer must work
together for both to succeed. So, all support services are
included free of charge in every Profitect agreement.
Future Roadmap and Sustaining Competency
When it comes to the future, Profitect wants to replace the
paradigm of reporting within the retail industry. The
company's solution has a very loyal following in the United
States, so its next step is to expand its international
presence. It is seeking to build upon its current business in
the U.S., Europe, South Africa, and Israel, and may also
expand into the Pacific region as well, due to interest in
Australia.
A key priority for Profitect is maintaining its culture as it
grows. Profitect is proud of the culture that it has built over
the years, prioritizing work-life balance and diversity with a
customer-first focus. If a customer needs support any time,
Profitect's team is always ready to step in to help. Whether
it's training, maintenance, or anything else, Profitect's
culture emphasizes doing the right thing and making sure
its customers are realizing maximum value at all times.
Guy Yehiav
CEO
Client Feedback
“We were aware of Profitect’s reputation in the market as a
leader, which is why we brought the team in to pitch, but it
was really the first demonstration of their prescriptive
analytics product that sold us.” Peter Enman, Loss
Prevention Manager, Sobeys Inc.
“We started partnering with Profitect back in 2014. Today
we have about 200 million lines of data running through the
system daily, with 5,000 users. That’s 5,000 people that can
take action on data, much faster than before.” Chris
Adams, VP Category Management Services, Ahold
Delhaize Company
“Profitect integrates sales data from the register to allow for
greater visibility and control of sales behaviors to identify
fraud, compliance, pricing, and associate efficiency.”
Michelle Neal, Director of Operations, Sunglass Hut NA
(As told to RIS News, January 2019)
We are very proud of our prescriptive
analytics solution, which has received
numerous retail industry awards for
being more intuitive, effective, and
user-friendly than the ‘traditional’
solutions it replaces at some of the
world’s leading retailers and
CPG organizations.
‘‘
‘‘
|June 2019 45

Key POS TrendsPOS Trends
Retail SectorRetail Sectorthe
Reshaping
In recent times, the retail industry hasn’t seen a more
exciting invention since the invention of cash register.
With new and innovative technologies helping shape
both online and offline experiences for consumers, the
landscape is continuously changing in a way which was
unimaginable even few years back. The best part is that
there seems to be no end of the innovation, which only
influencing the purchase decision of the consumers.
Nowadays the main focus of retailers is to create a safe,
engaging, and unique shopping experience for its
consumers, it’s very important for the retailers to
understand the importance of Big Data and in-store
analytics and adapting to the cloud. With the retail industry
at the verge of massive transformation, we are listing out
few key trends that everyone needs to know to be
successful in the ecosystem that is transforming quickly.
Multi-system Integration
Multi-system integration with various applications gets the
utmost priority from top retailers. Most of the retailers list
out POS integration with other applications as a key priority
alongside the implementation of dynamic marketing content
through mobile devices. This is mostly due to the retailer’s
interest to store all the customer information and purchase
history in a database, which is completely centralized that
could be easily integrated with multiple applications.
However, in order to do that, a retailer needs to use an ERP
database that can handle all these.
Speed
People always look for quick solutions for everything. A
clock starts ticking the moment a customer enters, no matter
how good the product is, if the process is slow and the
attention to details are missing, then customers will leave
disappointed. As a retailer, one cannot please everyone, but
with a modern and efficient POS, the service can be
improved. A modern POS simplifies the communication
between various departments and can save a lot of time for
both the retailer and the customer respectively.
Managing Stocks
Keeping and managing inventory is a nightmare for most of
the retailers, and it’s quite natural. Managing inventory is a
never-ending task and takes a lot of effort, time, and
manpower. However, it is quite important to manage
inventories when it comes to long-time survival. An
efficient POS system always makes the process of
managing the inventory much easier. The best part of a POS
is, one can monitor the status of stocked items, shipped
products, and new orders anytime. This is a huge time saver
for a cumbersome and a tedious process, and eventually
helps retailers to focus on other important aspects of
running the business.
Customized Experience
With POS systems, retailers just need to provide
personalization that scoops out every shopper. Every
passing year, retailers are adapting to personalized
technology solutions that allow an interactive user
experience. Thanks to the emergence of all new mobile
POS technology, now retailers can offer its customers more
choices to accommodate their shopping habits by letting
them to complete transactions anywhere in the store. Now
with the invention of improved POS marketers and
customer service teams can contact the buyer at each point
of their purchase decision. With so much data retailers and
consumers can have better customer service, quicker
payment processes and access to better offers and real-time
personalization.
Industry Trends
June 2019|46

Promotions and Marketing at its Best
Nowadays with the advent of digital technology, marketing
involves maintaining a digital presence as well. A POS can
integrate all the advertised offers with transactions, making
it easier to keep track of all the campaigns. Additionally, it
can integrate with CRM and track customer behavior. When
an offer gets popular among the masses, then the retailer
will see it in his transaction data.
Usage of Big Data analytics
In order to compete with e-commerce, retailers are now
taking the help of Big-Data and in store analytics just to
have a better idea about what’s happening inside the store.
Big-Data analytics helps retailers to track how frequently a
specific item moves from shelf to shopping cart allows
retailers to know the trends that are dominant in the market.
Analytics helps the retail industry in a big way to better
understand consumer purchase pattern and behaviors.
Keeping Track of Employees
To run a business smoothly a retailer, need few people. A
POS system enables to manage them with great accuracy.
With a Point of Sale system in place, employees can sign on
or off easily and the system will automatically log their
work hours and break hours.
Security
Above all, a POS system offers great security protections
that help keeping customer data safe. Retail stores and
businesses are always prime targets for Cyber Criminals,
and a data breach is not good for a business. So, by using
standard encryption and firewall, businesses can be secured
from cyber-attacks and customers can swipe their cards
with a peace of mind.
So, here we have listed out few of the POS trends that will
shape the future of the retail industry. As we look ahead,
these trends will be on focus for both retailers and
customers. The main advantage of an advanced POS system
is greater efficiency and optimization, it links all the
departments together which eventually allows to have better
control over the inventory, better profitability, and to
manage processes in an efficient way.
|June 2019 47

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