SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2016CIOAPPLICATIONS.COM7is crucial to determine the success of such new formats. We retain basket information for each store for multiple years. Once we've identified a format we'd like to assess, we create a test and control group and measure the performance before and after the changes we've introduced. We have recently experimented with anonymous cell phone tracking to aid in this analysis. Most cell phones try to access available Wi-Fi or blue tooth devices constantly. This can be used to map customer patterns within stores. This activity is passive and the consumer remains totally anonymous, yet you are able to determine what aisles they visit and where they dwell. If you compare this to POS data, you can infer whether poor sales of an item is due to customers never visiting that part of the store or whether they aren't interested in the item. This is truly transformational for retailers.Preeminent Retail technology Trends in 2015Image and video analytics are going to continue to trans-form retail operations. Most retailers deploy camera sys-tems. Increasingly, their images and videos can be harvest-ed to understand compliance with planogram assignments, whether customer queues are being managed well at registers, and what portions of the store customers visit. This technology continues to improve and computing power allows the analysis of large volumes of images and videos in aggregate to determine trends and patterns. This can only lead to improved retailer execution and better customer service.Extensive role of a CIOThe retail industry has certainly had its ups and downs over recent years. As a CIO, you need to keep your head on a swivel. At times, you are called on to reduce cost, hunker down, make more with less, and enhance the bottom line within your cost center and others. Then, within days it seems, you can be called upon to make strategic investments in hopeful digital and social programs designed to grow top line or improve the customer experience. It is a challenging profession! This volatility in the imperatives of the CIO role did not exist in the past. CIOs need to be flexible and adaptive to change in order to be successful.The CIO must be flexible and adaptive. He or she must be a business leader first, and a technician second. He or she must be an excellent communicator, and must understand change is normal, not abnormal. Most on your team won't see change as normal. They will want the world to be consistent and predictable. That is not the case. The world of the 5-year strategic plan is gone. You need to have a vision, an ideal end state in mind, and make decisions along the way consistent with that dream. You also need to accept that life isn't perfect and that your dreams may not ever be fully realized. Stay optimistic, however. If you don't think it can be done, none on your team will either.
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