Fujitsu : Innovative Retail Engagement Analytics Solution Delivers In-store Intelligence for a New Generation of Connected Retailers

Fujitsu today addresses the dramatic disparity in the high degree of actionable shopper engagement intelligence available for e-commerce, and the current severe lack of such insights in stores. The new FUJITSU Retail Engagement Analytics solution is a cloud-based analytics solution that integrates seamlessly with Point of Sales (PoS) and key retail information systems to further improve customer experience and store performance.

Having completed a successful proof of concept trial with an international fashion retailer, and with other trials planned, this new solution provides retailers with a transformational means of detecting, connecting and engaging with customers. Whether shoppers make a purchase or not, stores can now maximize sales opportunities and customer satisfaction by using in-built business process management to turn analytics insights into action.

For example, retailers will be better equipped to respond to customer traffic congestion in different departments by adding more associates and - when integrated into the retailer's enterprise via a loyalty app - can engage with shoppers while they are still in the store, making it more likely that they can make or save a sale. They also can use the analysis not only to highlight sales conversion by shopper volume, but also build a deeper understanding of promotion effectiveness over time.

'In the online world, much is known about shopper behavior. In the store-centric world, where 90 percent of all sales still take place, most retailers have no credible source for accurate, location-based shopper intelligence,' said Marc Janssens, executive vice president of Retail at Fujitsu America, Inc. 'Today's hyperconnected retail landscape requires technology solutions both online and in-store to enable a seamless shopping experience for both the retailer and the consumer. With brick-and-mortar stores continuing to be the epicenter of retail, Fujitsu is dedicated to developing and deploying the latest innovations for a completely integrated solution that improves the consumer experience while driving sales.'

Edward Westenberg, head of Retail Europe for Cisco: 'We are excited to expand our global partnership with Fujitsu into the Retail industry. Through Cisco's Connected Mobile eXperiences (CMX) delivered either on premises or from the cloud, our Wi-Fi infrastructure and the associated Cisco intelligent network capabilities allow our Retail customers to leverage the power of Fujitsu Retail Engagement Analytics in order to enhance the shopping experience and benefit from operational control, including location-based services, targeted advertisements, seamless and secure Wi-Fi onboarding, advanced analytics. This allows our customers to use Wi-Fi services to build customer loyalty, boost sales, and improve business operations.'

Anne McClelland, head of the Partner Ecosystem for Cisco's US Business Transformation team: 'With Fujitsu, Cisco is gaining a new and powerful Retail IT hardware, software and services partner who shares a wide visibility into larger, global retail organizations.'

How the FUJITSU Retail Engagement Analytics solution works

The FUJITSU Retail Engagement Analytics solution collects data from the latest connected sources in stores leveraging the Internet of Things (IoT) and analyzes it in conjunction with retail data (such as sales data) to provide retailers with a transformational and visual means of understanding, analyzing and responding to shopper behavior.

It uses Fujitsu-patented Flow Discovery Technology to deliver detailed and reliable analysis of shopper behavior, such as the number of visits per period, zonal volume of visitors, traffic flow through the store, number of repeat visitors, dwell time and sales department conversions that can be tracked, visualized, monitored and actioned.

Alerts can be sent to store associates to enable proactive responses to avert potential problems before they occur. The solution enables store associates and managers to monitor and manage store performance with insightful and intuitive dashboards, reports, heatmaps and floor maps. For example, to drive revenue and profitability in their stores, retailers can use the solution to garner insights on how consumers interact with the physical store space, the patterns they use throughout the store and how long they dwell in a particular area; this information significantly helps managers make more informed decisions in how they merchandise their products, where they place and concentrate staff, whether the lighting needs to be adjusted, etc. - all with a view to improving the experience for customers and driving revenue. Additionally, the analytical insights provide a rich and accurate source of data for the business teams planning store layouts, merchandising, marketing, CRM and labor scheduling.

Delivered as a cloud offering, the solution is built on a platform that is specifically designed for precision analytics at scale and up to 500-times faster than traditional databases, made possible by Fujitsu advanced and high-performance database technology.

The FUJITSU Retail Engagement Analytics solution is built from the ground up with maximum security and privacy in mind. To address customer and country-specific privacy policies, Fujitsu also can deliver a privately-hosted version of the solution over its own secure Fujitsu Cloud IaaS Trusted Public S5, delivered via the company's global network of data centers to meet customers' security requirements.

The new solution is being showcased at the Fujitsu booth (#3805) at the National Retail Federation (NRF) BIG Show on January 17-20, 2016 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City.

Availability

The FUJITSU Retail Engagement Analytics solution will be available from April 2016 with rollout starting in North America.

Notes to editors

1 Fujitsu's Connected Retail approach

Fujitsu international strength and continuous investment in technology innovation allows the company to deliver consistent services to its customers. Fujitsu is committed to using its size, scope and experience as one of the world's largest IT companies to deliver global capabilities with local responsiveness and know-how. This encompasses:

• 159,000 people in more than 100 countries around the globe
• Over 202 billion yen (US$1.69 billion), approximately 4.3 percent of revenue in R&D, 95,000 patents worldwide on technologies, products, services and processes
• End-to-end portfolio of retail applications, devices and supporting services
• One-stop-shop with the majority of products and solutions developed by Fujitsu

Fujitsu retail solutions cover the whole value chain - from store, warehouse and headquarter to the backbone in the data center. It transforms the customer experience in stores and across channels, and has the retail solution intellectual property, process knowledge and integration skills to make a difference.

2 The Omnichannel Consumer Preferences study summarizes the findings and input from a variety of retailers and property developers, and A.T. Kearney retail sector analysis. The independent survey of more than 2,500 consumers and dozens of retail executives was funded by, and completed in cooperation with, leading U.S. shopping mall real estate developers.

3 Flow Discovery technology is an extension to Fujitsu's Automated Process Discovery (APD) technology. Flow Discovery allows the shopper tracking through the store to be visualized using the facts and evidence from data sources to trace and render the route 'as it happens'. This approach and technology allows us to use non-invasive techniques to gather and process the evidence very efficiently into a comprehensive and accurate picture.

4 Using columnar-oriented data store approach along with indexing of columns and data compression, reduces the disk access time and enables Fujitsu to achieve faster query time over a large volume data sets. The performance advantage is on the order of 500x over traditional row-based store. For more information, please see:
https://www.fujitsu.com/global/Images/FUJITSU_Software_SymfowareAnalyticsServer_Datasheet.pdf

Online resources

Fujitsu Ltd. issued this content on 2016-01-18 and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 2016-01-19 07:57:11 UTC

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