NACStech Workshops Tackle Top Technology Issues

Tuesday's sessions provided insights and ideas on mobile couponing, mobile apps, cloud computing, electric vehicles and IT management strategies.

May 18, 2011

LAS VEGAS - NACStech, the convenience and fuel retailing industry€™s premier technology and business solutions event, held the final 8 of 16 educational workshops on Tuesday and the opening of the expo, where retailers saw the latest products and services available. Here is a snapshot at some of what retailers learned yesterday:

Toss the Scissors - Coupons Have Gone Mobile
Mobile coupons are a prevalent and pervasive marketing solution, according to Rick Sales, president of Abierto Networks LLC. With 94 percent of the U.S. population using coupons while shopping and 72 percent of U.S. adults and 87 percent of teens using text messaging, mobile couponing can play a key role in the c-store marketing mix.

In light of this, speakers Tom Bell, vice president of IT at Certified Oil Company; Erika Curtis, product specialist of electronic payment systems at Growmark Inc., and Larry Jackson, managing director of Good To Go Markets, shared their experiences, strategies and best practices in harnessing the sales and marketing powers of mobile couponing.

Curtis spoke about the three main categories of mobile coupons €" SMS, enhanced and intelligent €" as well as their features and benefits. For retailers, mobile coupons offer myriad benefits, including building brand loyalty and driving customer in-store purchases while using existing technologies consumers already use, he said.

Jackson stressed that mobile coupon and customer loyalty programs are even more effective platforms when tied into social media.

"(Like texting) social media sites are also opt-in and permission-based entities and people have to want to be part of the action," said Jackson. "If you have a loyalty program and an app., you can integrate it and tie it in with social media. You want to make sure you use all the different tools at your reach. It€™s an easy way to get in front of the customer."

Sales also stressed that converging digital marketing technologies such as mobile coupons, social media and digital signage, allow them to be much more effective than when used alone. And when tied in with store loyalty programs, mobile couponing gives retailers yet another great way to target and engage with customers, said Jackson.

"The real power of this is the data you receive back and how you use it," said Jackson. "Your loyalty program allows you collect a large amount of data and sift through it€¦that data helps us to build relationships with our customers to the most efficient level."

Is There An App For That?
With 96 percent of the U.S. population using mobile phones and the veritable explosion in mobile applications, it makes perfect business sense why more brands are launching their own apps. And c-store retailers should jump on the bandwagon, noted to Speaker Tim Greenfield, president of Gold Mobile.

According to Greenfield, mobile technology can provide retailers with a host of benefits, including helping them increase in-store transactions and drive loyalty; pull customers from pump into the retail store; promote loyalty and repeat business and create new revenue opportunities. In light of this, apps are yet another tool retailers can leverage to get in front of more customers and build a more powerful brand presence, he said.

"The mobile phone is always with the customer, so those brands that figure out how to get in are going to be able to drive everything they want to drive," he said. "The key is figuring out how to get into that device€¦whether it be through email programs, loyalty, web and digital. The beauty of mobile is that you get access to data that grows over time, you€™re capturing info and you€™re building valuable data that helps you make better (marketing) decisions in the moment."

Since the most downloaded apps are games and social media, retailers who want to succeed in this space need to make their apps relevant, and that means marrying them with social media. Doing this makes the app more relationship and entertainment-based and thus more appealing to consumers, he said.

Next, Greenfield explored the best practices of several brands achieving great success with mobile apps, including Best Buy, Starbucks and QVC.

Besides helping to drive customer behavior and brand loyalty, mobile apps can be a more cost-effective and user-friendly technology to implement, since there€™s no hardware to install and the investment can be small, depending on what the retailer wants to do, added Greenfield.

"The challenge is what you want to do with a mobile application and how it will serve your purposes," he said.

Should You Fire Your IT Staff?
In a constantly changing industry with increasing technological demands many retailers may be exploring going outside the company for their IT needs. So should retailers fire their IT staffs and embrace outsourcing? The simple answer is no. However, when it comes to technology not every thing is simple.

"The best model is a blended, or hybrid, approach to IT management," explained Scott Jordan, founder and CTO of DELTEC Information Solutions. "Both options have benefits the other does not have."

Jordan explained that the keys to leveraging an integrated IT management team are clearly defining company goals, recognizing and defining core competencies, assessing the systems and determining the management process. But above all, the main factor to a successful integrated approach is review, review, review, he said.

An internal staff offers front line support, an expertise in the company's business and direct interaction with the staff. In addition, having an internal IT department allows the company oversight of the department, Jordan explained.

External IT staff also comes with benefits: a specialized skill set, an honest assessment of systems, project management and reporting and tracking activities.

However, whether in house or outsourced, a retailer needs to have an attitude that embraces technology and IT management, and not one that buries its head in the sand. Ideally, Jordan explained, a retailer needs to figure out how to leverage the investment in IT. And should a disconnect of management and IT occur, both sides are to blame, he added.

Often times, IT management can fail if the company carries a narrow view of the field, if executives do not consult the IT department on business decisions until the tail end, and if the company is not willing to invest enough into IT to make it work effectively, Jordan said.

Similarly, IT professionals carry some fault. For example, Jordan explained, IT personnel sometimes work in the moment and do not look at the big picture, they get overwhelmed putting out the latest "fire" and, in some cases, the IT department feels the need to protect their department which creates roadblocks, he added.

To be successful, both sides need to change their thinking, change their conversation and change the process. Specifically, Jordan explained, starting with the top down executives need to realize that technology is only going to have more of an impact on their business, not less. Also, the two need to learn to understand and speak each other's language. "IT and management speak different languages," Jordan said. "The techie is always talking stuff, stuff, stuff and the CFO is always talking money, money, money. Leadership on both sides needs to be literate, if not fluent, in each other's language."

Bridging this chasm solves a lot of problems, he added, if not avoids them all together.

Servicing the Electric Car Customer
While different forecasts offer varying opinions on just how quickly consumers will adopt electric vehicles in the coming years, the fact is that more models are coming onto the market and the way consumers "fuel" up is beginning to change.

President Obama has publicly stated that his goal is to have one million plug-in electric vehicles on U.S. roads by 2015. For the convenience and petroleum retailing industry, this would mean one million vehicles driving an average of 40 miles a day without the use of fuel.

Speakers at the NACStech workshop said that electric vehicles are a definite threat to the channel. Every mile driven on battery power reduces the amount of fuel purchased at retail gas stations, noted Ray Hutchinson, vice president of corporate development for Gilbarco Veeder-Root and one of the session€™s presenters.

However, electric vehicles present an opportunity for the industry€™s retailers, too, the panelists said. No one chain is known as the place to get a charge, so the opportunity is there to "own the space," according to Owen Resh, marketing director at Aker Wade.

Other insights that came out of the workshop were:

  • There are two types of plug-in electric vehicles entering the global market: the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, which has electric propulsion as well as an internal combustion engine; and the electric vehicle, which has 100-percent electric propulsion.
  • Plug-in electric vehicles require frequent charging, so "destination charging" and "convenience charging" facilities will be needed for successful adoption.
  • Electric vehicle drivers are older, affluent and educated €" a prime demographic.

Time to Get Your Head in the Cloud
Doug Tidwell, senior software engineer at IBM, presented a case study of a real world implementation of cloud computing by North Carolina State University. Prior to that, David Ezell, principal software architect at Verifone, noted that PCATS is preparing a white paper on how to use the cloud, as a companion to a paper released recently by the National Retail Federation on using the cloud at retail.

Ezell said that the NRF white paper is good, but designed more for large big box retailers and that the convenience and fuel retailing industry and smaller box retailers need their own blueprint for saving money and growing their business using the cloud.

Cloud computing basically means the sharing of processing resources over a network of computers. While there are real obstacles to widespread use of cloud computing, such as departmental loss of control, ultimately the business case is so strong for cloud computing that more and more companies will utilize this technique.

"People who have substantiated results from moving things to the cloud have said that the most difficult obstacles are cultural and political, not technological," said Tidwell. He explained to audience members how North Carolina State created a Virtual Computing Lab that allowed students and researchers to share time on the network of computers.

For retailers, Tidwell envisioned cloud computing allowing the payroll department to use processing time only twice a month when checks need to be cut, for example. The other times, that computing power could be put to other uses. Cloud computer means more computing power with few resources, he concluded.

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