Major industry trade show garners big interest in mobile technology but slow omni-channel investment, according to Glynn Davis of RetailInsider

New technology is causing a major change in human behaviour that is having a dramatic effect on the world of traditional retailers, according to Howard Schultz founder of coffee chain Starbucks, writes Glynn Davis of RetailInsider exclusively for Retail Technology.

Speaking at the National Retail Federation (NRF) Big Show in New York Schultz told delegates: "There has never been a more challenging time for bricks and mortar retailers to succeed in an endurable way. There are seismic changes taking place in human behaviour, linked to technology - especially mobile."

He suggested that by embracing the status quo of using traditional marketing, PR and communications then retailers would be "literally on a collision course with time". To counter this doomsday scenario he believes retailers must invest in "mission critical" technologies such as mobile.

Mission critical technology adoption

Such investments are at the heart of what Marks & Spencer (M&S) is doing, according to Laura Wade-Gery, executive director of multichannel e-commerce at M&S, who was speaking at a Cisco event to coincide with NRF.

She admits that the answers as to what technologies and innovations will work well for retailers are not obvious and so suggests companies have to "test and put it in front of people and see what happens". "Traditional retailers are having to learn new skills," adds Wade-Gery, who ensured M&S was one of the first retailers to introduce mobile-optimised websites.

Ray Carlin, general manager and vice president at HP Retail, said there has been great interest in the mobile point-of-sale (PoS) solutions from HP but that this, "with a few exceptions," had mainly been for pilots.

Mobile wins over channel integration

This is part of what he says is a surprisingly slow level of investment and implementation of omni-channel solutions. "The industry has moved more slowly around omni-channel than anticipated. I don't think it is technology related but is more process related," he said.

Richard Goodall, sales and marketing director at PCMS, agreed that hardware sales around omnichannel were lower than expected: "There have been a lack of big new projects and the ones out there are very competitive."

But he added this has been offset by big investments in software - with mobile PoS an area of big interest - especially at PCMS. "This is the big area of demand. Retailers can't necessarily replace their existing [fixed] solutions so they want to add mobility into the mix and in many cases their existing PoS supplier has not invested in mobile," Goodall said.  

Part of the problem with omni-channel investments, according to Carlin, is that there has been a gap between the vision that technology companies are selling and the reality that some retailers do not like change. However, he predicted that 2013 will see "better progress in implementations" and that HP would benefit.

Waiting for mature offerings

Since the hardware and software ecosystems of the various elements of omni-channel - including digital signage, media players and tablet devices - were highly fragmented Carlin believes HP as a large operator with a wide portfolio of products has an opportunity to "take leadership" in this area.

Whereas taking best-of-breed products is commonplace with PoS solutions, because it is mature part of the market, he suggests that with the likes of digital signage the providers are much smaller and there is a lot of choice, which is leading to some anxiety from many large retailers unsure of which vendors to select.