Delivering Your Digital Vision

Three Advantages Mobile Point-of-Sale (POS) Delivers

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As we announced earlier this week, we are collaborating with long-time customer, Urban Outfitters, Inc. to develop a mobile point-of-sale (POS) solution for their stores. With a strong focus on delivering a differentiated customer experience, the mobile POS application will bring many advantages to Urban’s retail floor. I thought we’d highlight three here:

1. Optimized Customer Service

The Apple Store located just minutes away from Starmount’s offices here in Austin is constantly packed with people. Especially on a hallmark day like today with the release of the iPhone 4, customer service has to be rock solid. Not only can a store associate demonstrate product and answer questions, but they also have the ability to search inventory and close the sale all in the same spot where you might have first walked in to tinker with a new toy. For a retailer like Urban Outfitters, this personalized service will be extended to quickly and easily help their customers find items, clothing and shoe sizing, and more. No longer will customers be obligated to wait in line at the register to find or pay for an item. Personalizing how store associates interact with customers will set the in-store experience apart and truly optimize the many touch points where service is advantageous in the purchase decision process.
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Free your ARTS Domain Model from aging technology

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Complex enterprise applications can become trapped on outdated technology due to the cost and complexity of porting to more advanced technology. Breaking free of aging technology isn’t easy, but for retailers this problem has been made a lot easier to solve. This article shows how to quickly build the persistence layer for an application from an ARTS (Association of Retail Technology Standards) compliant database schema.
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Implementing I18N relationships with JPA

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I have seen quite a bit of discussion about how to address database relationships that involve a base table and an internationalized (I18N) table with JPA. The difficult issue with this relationship is that from a database perspective it is a typical One-to-Many, however from an application perspective it is a One-to-One with the locale determining which row from the I18N table is returned with the base table. This article describes one possible solution for addressing this problem.

From what I have been able to determine, there is no specific support in JPA to address this. There is a mechanism in OpenJPA but the locale is fixed so it can’t be changed dynamically at run time. With the lack of native JPA support for I18N, I decided to develop my own strategy for tackling the issue.
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Heading to NRF Retail’s Big Show

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Our bags are packed, extra layers of clothing will be worn (we are from Texas…) and we are headed to the National Retail Federation’s Big Show which starts Monday, January 11th, continuing through January 13th. We invite you to join us at the Jacob K. Javitz Convention Center in New York City. If you are planning to attend, we’ll be in booth #2164. If you are in New York and haven’t made plans yet, have no fear as we have some complimentary free passes so that you can be a part.

In case you didn’t know, Starmount will launch Marquis, a new digital signage solution at the NRF. Read the rest of this entry »

In the spirit of giving…

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As the end of a busy, challenging yet successful year comes to an end, Starmount employees pulled through with another important goal that we set for ourselves. This time the goal wasn’t a product launch or a successful software implementation, instead our goal was to help those not as fortunate this holiday season. Collectively, our team here in Austin came together and raised money and gathered boxes of canned food items for the Capital Area Food Bank.

Our employees raised $555 in cash to donate and that $555 was then matched by our company which means we collectively gave $1110 to families in need this holiday season. Sometimes, we may take our day to day life and lifestyles for granted, but as someone who has visited homes like the ones that Capital Area Food Bank provides assistance for, I know what an impact even a little help can have on a family in need.
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Software as a Service, really!

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Before I start, I believe a short introduction is in order. I’m a software engineer but those that know me will tell you that I’m probably the least techie person they’ve known. I’ve even been called a technophobe by my son since I still own AND program my VCR at home, and will probably never own an iPhone or similar since I’m the guy with the “Don’t touch my screen” sign on my laptop – and I mean it! And yet, here I am writing my first blog entry ever…

I’ve been writing software for about 20 years, implementing retail solutions for the last 12 years, one year in between implementing web sites for non-profit organizations, and yet I’ve never been as touched by a potential client’s visit as I was a couple of weeks ago.

In the span of a couple of days we visited a pediatric ward busting at the seams, and a family clinic’s pharmacy. The pediatric ward experience is almost impossible to describe. It was truly one of those times where “you had to be there”. Read the rest of this entry »

Digital Signage and Electronic Price Tag System

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I read an interesting article today entitled “Altierre: Bringing Retail Industry to the Digital Age” concerning new technology for the retail industry. The company, Altierre, has developed a retail digital price tag system that employs shelf-level digital tags that communicate with a store server over a wireless infrastructure.

The tags in the Altierre system are wireless LCD display devices that can be placed on shelves like normal price tags. Since the Altierre system is fully networked, pricing and promotion data can be generated for all stores at the retail headquarters and downloaded to each store. At the local store, the Altierre system takes over and automatically sends the data ‘over the last mile,’ so to speak, over its wireless platform to the RF Display Tags. The system makes dynamic pricing and promotion a reality, giving the flexibility to change the price of any product in one or all of the stores in a chain, based on store traffic, season and competitive strategies. As an example, the tags let retailers launch promotions such as ‘Buy One, Get One Free’ almost instantly. At the local store level, with the click of a mouse, a grocery store manager could drop prices for a happy hour sale, and just as easily with another click return prices back to normal just in time for the dinner rush.

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Unearth the Holy Grail for DOOH

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Holy Grail I read an interesting article on Digital Signage Insights concerning the future of digital-out-of-home (DOOH). The article poses the question “Why can’t the next great media company emerge from the digital out-of-home space?”

For years digital signage vendors have focused their attention on developing powerful digital signage software that accommodates small networks through large enterprise deployments. The number of companies that exist in this space is amazing, approximately 300 or more by some accounts. However, as all of us in the industry know, the technology is evolving very quickly and just providing a digital signage product that facilitates placing text, graphics, and video on digital screens is no longer enough to compete in the industry – the bar is rising. Vendors have to consider online, social media, mobile, place-based media, user-generated content, hand-held devices, and wireless to be competitive.

The article goes on to say that “it’s critical to leverage the fullness of the medium while paying attention to, and planning for, our shifting media landscape. The DOOH industry cannot be looked at as though it were outside of the sphere of other media properties. It isn’t a separate entity. It is a piece of a robust ecosystem, in which symbiotic relationships foretell success.”

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Platt Retail Institute Predicts a Growing Digital Signage Market

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graph_dotsI received the PRI Q4 North American Digital Signage Index from my friends at the Platt Retail Institute. I applaud the work Steven Platt and his colleagues are doing for the industry. They provide measurable research on the digital signage industry allowing industry providers to predict the direction of the market. Nice job!

The comprehensive report highlights the continued growth of the digital signage industry and predicts a bright future for the next 6 months or so. PRI indicates that the digital signage Index has grown 10.83% from Q2 to Q3 2009 indicating a demand for digital signage products and services. Looking at the Near-Term Index PRI, an increase of 15.12% indicates an optimistic outlook for the industry for the next 3 to 6 months. Increases in index components like planned capital expenditures and hiring indicate that companies are ready to invest in the anticipated growth. Specifically, the digital signage software industry growth from Q2 to Q3 was 18.25% and predicted increase for the next 3 to 6 months is 37.69%.

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Digital Signage for Every Segment of the Market

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every-segmentI read a whitepaper from Scala entitled “A Digital Signage Solution for Every Company Regardless of Size or Budget“. The paper explores the different segments of the marketplace and how specialized hardware solutions can be effectively utilized to address the range of market segments. Unfortunately the paper is a sale’s collateral as opposed to an objective evaluation of the market segments but the meat of the paper identifies the necessity for different solutions for the myriad of digital signage customers.

The paper talks about the concept of “value for the money corridor” – the best hardware solution for the various customers employing digital signage. On a chart that maps cost vs. platform capability the lowest cost and lowest capability is the photo frame. Scala is using the IAdea Photo Frame.

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