This Week’s Product Pick
Code Corporation (Bluffdale, UT) released two new handheld barcode readers, Code Reader 2500 and Code Reader 3500. Using MegaPixel digital imaging, dual-field optics, and patent-pending glare-reducing technology, the CR2500 and CR3500 offer unequaled performance, according to the manufacturer. The pair of readers employ new intuitive and reliable targeting techniques, guiding the user to an optimal reading distance; in addition, they read and decode any symbology at “ultra-fast” speeds, include wide 1D and smaller 2D codes. The new automatic glare-reducing illumination technology delivers enhanced reading capability for printed circuit boards, IV bags, driver licenses, and other hard-to-read surfaces. Included are Code’s JavaScript Application Development Kit software and Bluetooth wireless capability. “The CR2500 and CR3500 represent the embodiment of Code’s years of experience with high-definition dual-field optics,” noted George Powell, President/CEO. “We focused our efforts on developing the reader that was missing in the marketplace: one that would not only be ultra-fast and easy to use, but could read all barcode symbologies, on all kinds of surfaces, and still be affordable.”
Code Reader 3500 from Code Corporation
COMPANY BUSINESS Zebra Seeks to Partner VARs and ISVs Zebra Technologies (Vernon Hills, IL) introduced its Technology Partner Program, which seeks to bring VARs and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) together to solve unique end-user business challenges in Auto ID. The new program, previously piloted with select Zebra ISVs, provides access to software development tools, market resources, and most importantly, Zebra’s vast network of channel partners. It falls under Zebra’s PartnersFirst channel effort. “With the wide roll-out of this program, we are providing our technology partners with the opportunity to develop unique application-centric solutions and strong channel partnerships,” said Michelle Kabele, Senior Manager, Channel Programs and Marketing, Zebra Technologies. “This collaboration should not only help our ISVs and channel partners grow their businesses but it should also continue to strengthen Zebra’s robust channel network.” To participate in the Zebra Technology Partner Program, software vendors must derive at least 70% of their annual revenue from either software- or hardware-related sales that are complimentary to Zebra products. The program provides quarterly meetings with Zebra managers to discuss current and potential projects in which Zebra products may be part of the solution. It also includes training opportunities for the partner’s staff to help educate them on the many products available for integration with their solution offerings. Lastly, Zebra recognizes and rewards partners with referral fees. “More and more, end-users have very specific needs and requirements that are difficult for one type of channel partner to solve,” Kabele shared with RRN.Com. “Further, our ideas of what constitutes the normal partnership no longer apply. This is about providing the context that embraces all these different partner types and supplying the gateway to help them find each other.” She recommended reading the recent book, “The Tribe,” which describes the emergence of communities with very specific interests—in this case, barcoding, card printing, and kiosks.
Fujitsu Transaction Solutions (Richardson, TX) has unveiled its new self-service initiative, dubbed “Univations.” (Think Innovation and “You,” the Consumer.) The program seeks to move Fujitsu from self-checkout, to kiosks in multiple form factors, to emerging opportunities in mobile commerce, explained Fujitsu executives during dinner with RRN.Com this week. To do so, it will leverage the Fujitsu brand, the company’s knowledge of retail, its Pervasive Retailing software framework, and its service offerings. “Current market conditions are favorable for adoption of self-service,” explained Peter Wolf, VP, Self-Ordering & Univations Operations. “We feel some of these self-service initiatives may even be mandated by retailers who are trying to save labor and realign their businesses in the manner of banks and airlines.” Univations will be structured on the “Bronze, Silver, Gold” strategy, in which products are presented in three tiers of functionality and capability to address customer needs, as well as budget. At NRF in January, Fujitsu plans to showcase wall-mount, pedestal, and full-blown kiosks that the company will bring to market and lifecycle manage. In addition to traditional retail, the company intends to pursue near-term opportunities in c-store and gas, quick-service restaurants, and entertainment/arena applications. “On the software side, we’re going to leverage some of our GlobalStore assets,” Wolf continued. “Beyond that, we’re going to bring in a partner network to offer additional solutions. Right now, we’re working with a partner in deli order/queue management in the grocery arena. We’re also looking at gift registry, guided selling, and product location.” He noted that Fujitsu’s upcoming PowerPartner program will span self-service as well as traditional POS, and that there has been much interest in outdoor kiosks on the part of the channel.
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Worth Your While
Retail Market Seminar
Ingram Micro Data Capture/POS Division
October 28
Santa Ana, CA
IMPACT Now
ScanSource
November 10-11
Orlando
NRF Annual Convention & Expo
National Retail Federation
January 11-14, 2009
New York
ProMat 2009
Material Handling Industry of America (MHIA)
January 12-15, 2009
Chicago
Inspire 2009
Retail Solutions Providers Association (RSPA)
January 18-21, 2009
Aruba Marriott Resort
NRA Show
National Restaurant Association
May 16-19, 2009
Chicago
STARTS & STOPS
BlueStar’s Spanish Armada
BlueStar (Florence, KY) will now distribute Motorola’s mobility and scanning products in Latin America, as well as in the U.S. and Canada. To support that effort, the distributor has added new business development managers, account executives, and sales and marketing staff. BlueStar Latin America presently ships to more than 30 countries in its region every day from its warehouse in Miami.
“BlueStar Latin America is excited about our newly formed partnership with Motorola’s Enterprise Mobility Business,” affirmed Steve Cuntz, BlueStar’s President/CEO. “We expect that BlueStar’s unique solutions-based distribution model will create growth in vertical channels for our current resellers in Latin America. We are currently adding ISVs with profit-building solutions in Spanish language sets, which, when combined with Motorola’s broad range of hardware offerings, will create higher margins for our resellers and incremental growth for Motorola.”
“BlueStar has been a Value-Added Distributor within our North America theater for five years, and continues to enhance its go-to-market strategy with innovative programs like Fusion,” observed Janet Schijns, VP, Worldwide Channels, Motorola Enterprise Mobility Business. “We now welcome them to our Latin America theater, and look to continued success.” Our readers may remember Schijns from The JS Group, where she consulted with vendors and distributors on channel strategies and partner programs and spoke at leading industry events.
BC/DR Spelled Out by Ingram Micro
Ingram Micro (Santa Ana, CA) has expanded its professional services offerings to include business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) services. Available to solution providers in the U.S. and Canada through the Ingram Micro Services Network (IMSN), these new offerings enable partners to quickly build or expand their BC/DR practice without any significant investment in their current infrastructure or engineering and sales staff, according to the distributor. Interestingly, Ingram Micro’s solution providers may also secure these new BC/DR services for their own businesses.
“Business continuity planning and disaster recovery solutions and services are critical to businesses of any size, and in many cases, serve as the sole lifeline for companies when the unexpected occurs,” pointed out Jason Beal, Director of Sales, Ingram Micro Services Division. “With this new line of on-site professional services, we’re providing the BC/DR blueprint that makes it easy for our partners to take advantage of the growing awareness and demand of end-users for business continuity services and disaster recovery solutions. Equally important is the fact that our partners can also use these services to ensure their businesses are protected as well.”
Ingram Micro’s BC/DR services were designed to provide “a more holistic and comprehensive approach” to assessing, anticipating, and planning and preparing for potential business interruptions, ranging from major to minor. By leveraging the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), Six Sigma, and other Total Quality Management (TQM) process models, Ingram Micro’s BC/DR services also provide a repeatable, consistent approach to service that can grow and change with the solution providers’ and end-users’ business needs.
Join the Party at No Charge
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ALLIANCES
NCR Provides Experticity
NCR (Dayton, OH) will resell Experticity’s live on-screen sales and customer support technology through its worldwide sales channel. The two-way, multichannel, in-store video solution will be paired with NCR’s self-service kiosks, including the new SelfServ 60 with Intel vPro technology, debuted last week at KioskCom in New York City. NCR’s professional services team will stage, deploy, and support the Experticity software platform.
“NCR has been an important advocate and proponent for our next-generation sales and service solution, and both companies share a common vision of how innovative technologies like the Experticity platform can help retail and other businesses improve customer service levels and bottom-line results,” stated D.L. Baron, Founder and CEO of Experticity (Seattle). In his remarks, Richard Arnold, NCR VP of Retail Industry Marketing, emphasized that in today’s world “delivering the right information at the right moment to shoppers is critical in supporting the purchase decision.”
Experticity’s technology was demonstrated to RRN.Com at KioskCom and it’s pretty neat. Remote expert service agents—supplied by the retailer, consumer goods manufacturer or third party—can be accessed by the consumer according to language and skill. You’re talking in real-time to the service agent, who can answer questions, pull up and display information, and even sketch your path to the product through the store environment. Dozens of retailers are currently testing the platform, according to Experticity, and Staples in Canada has rolled out the system across 35 stores.
An Electronic Fishbowl in Every Restaurant
The National Restaurant Association (Washington, DC) has expanded its partnership with Fishbowl (Alexandria, VA) to bring a broader array of revenue-generating services to its member restaurants and state restaurant association partners. Association members will now receive exclusive rates on mobile marketing via text messaging, online ordering, online reservations, and Website services. Fishbowl, named for the glass jars that collect business cards, which nobody does anything with, leads in permission-based e-mail marketing solutions for the restaurant industry, and currently serves 30,000 restaurant locations. It partners with 29 state restaurant associations in addition to NRA.
“The restaurant industry is the only industry we serve,” said Scott Shaw, Founder and CEO of Fishbowl. “It’s the industry that most of us have come from so we’re here for the long haul. That’s why we’re excited to expand our relationship with the National Restaurant Association to offer our entire suite of solutions to its membership at exclusive savings, giving member restaurants the tools to connect with their customers and drive them back in or online. At the end of the day, it’s all about filling seats, and those are the results we aim to serve daily.”
“E-mail and the Internet have become an integral part of most Americans’ daily activities, and as restaurants play an essential role in our lives, consumers are looking for this convenience in restaurant services as well,” asserted NRA President and CEO Dawn Sweeney. According to recent research, 48% of adults have visited restaurant Websites, 18% have placed orders online, and 17% have booked an online reservation. Surprisingly, 22% want to receive cell-phone notices from their favorite restaurants.
Scott Shaw, CEO of Fishbowl
Code
Corner
Paramount Technologies (Walled Lake, MI) introduced WorkPlace Project for middle-market professional services billing and budgeting. With WorkPlace, employees and contractors now can track costs in requisition line items, and have specific purchases charged to specific projects and even phases or activities, according to the developer. Employee and contractor time can similarly be tracked and applied at the project, phase or activity level. Moreover, budgetary oversight is enhanced, with the ability to set up the budget at any level of the project, track and compare requisitions to that budget, and receive warning if over budget, as well as route for approval if the budget is exceeded. Paramount offers platform-independent workforce automation solutions as well as versions designed specifically for integration with Microsoft Dynamics GP, SAP Business One, and Epicor.
INSTALLATIONS
Will RFID Fit American Apparel?
American Apparel will test the RFID-based Clarity-ARS Advanced Retail System from Xterprise Incorporated (Carrollton, TX). The pilot is designed to allow the clothing retailer to validate the solution’s item-level inventory and operations management capabilities in an actual store environment. American Apparel targets young adults with edgy advertising and product branding, and currently has 225 retail outlets.
The Clarity-ARS solution from Xterprise was selected for the pilot because of its out-of-the-box item-level inventory management functionality and proven ability to scale to address the complexities and volumes found in retail store networks, according to the two parties. The solution utilizes Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 and its BizTalk RFID capabilities. Anticipated benefits include increased sales and customer service, reduced out of stocks, and greater security and loss prevention. American Apparel also expects to exploit advanced business intelligence to better respond to stock movements and in-store consumer behavior.
“We are excited about the prospect of helping American Apparel to manage out-of-stock issues and item-level security in their stores,” declared Doug Wallace, COO at Xterprise. “American Apparel is a recognized leader in the use of RFID technology to solve business problems and we are pleased with the opportunity to pilot our solution in their store environment.”
When You Care to Send the Very Best
Hallmark has become the first nationwide customer to deploy the Secure Franchise service from iPass (Redwood Shores, CA), which allows franchise store owners to securely access corporate applications such as POS, customer loyalty, and store surveillance systems over any high-speed connection. The Secure Franchise service is an optional, add-on feature to iPass Retail Office, the managed network service that was rolled out earlier this year to all 463 Hallmark corporate stores as well as 250 independently-owned locations.
“The benefits of having managed high-speed broadband Internet service in all stores greatly outweigh the costs,” reported Talli Denney, Retail Technology Manager for Hallmark. “Broadband is the foundation for many emerging product offerings, including personalized greetings, and a variety of new operational capabilities. Most importantly, the combination of iPass Retail Office, the Secure Franchise service, and our Hallmark POSX 2008 software allows both our company-owned stores and independent retailers to meet strict PCI requirements.”
The service is available to any iPass Retail Office or Branch Office customer for the $99 one-time set-up fee and monthly fee of $30 per user. It requires use of Cisco Virtual Private Network (VPN) hardware, plus an automated software download is required for any computers being used for access. iPass plans to support additional brands of VPN hardware in the future.
Want to Network Face-to-Face? Cisco Now Rents Out its TelePresence Suites in the U.S., U.K., and India
Key
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Links
Be sure to visit these vendors for the latest in channel products and offers for resellers.
POS & Auto ID Distribution
BlueStar
Ingram Micro
ScanSource
POS & Peripherals
Bematech
Logic Controls
POS-X
Barcode Printers
Wasp Barcode Technologies
Data Collection Terminals
CipherLab
Datalogic
Mobile
Honeywell Scanning & Mobility
Honeywell Scanning & Mobility/Metrologic
Janam Technologies
ECRs / Touchscreens / Printers/
Parts and Supplies
CRS, Inc.
Receipt
Printers
Citizen Systems America
Star Micronics
Retail Software
InfoTouch
Toshiba TEC
Screen Protection
3M
Optical Products
Thermal Printers
Seiko Instruments USA
INTEGRATION
Remote Management Gets Embedded
Windows Embedded device manufacturers and service providers seeking to build remote support into their product offerings can now take advantage of the new LogMeIn Embedded Program from LogMeIn, Inc. (Woburn, MA). The developer, which provides on-demand, remote-connectivity solutions accessible through Web browser, has targeted OEMs and companies that provide support services in the areas of POS and kiosks, in particular.
“As new breeds of smarter, Windows-based devices are connecting to the Internet in disparate and remote locations, embedded device manufacturers and service providers are looking for a better way to access, manage, and support these remote systems,” observed Andrew Burton, VP of Products, LogMeIn. “The LogMeIn Embedded Program provides tools and services to specifically benefit these IT professionals.”
In addition to its dedicated pricing and licensing program, the company will reward referrals by service providers. Now supporting Windows XP Embedded, LogMeIn IT Reach also can be configured to run in “embedded mode” to avoid interrupting end-users or the functional use of the device. One channel enthusiast is Armagh Cash Register (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada). “We deploy our POS systems with LogMeIn IT Reach,” confirmed Harry Mitchell, Account Manager for the VAR. “We keep our customers happy and respond to and deal with issues in a fraction of the time it would take in person.”
[Editor’s Note: Microsoft just released its new Embedded O/S, known as Windows Embedded Standard 2009 (WES 2009). For more information, refer to the general computer press.]
Dashboard for LogMeIn IT Reach
Driving Safely at Micros
Shift4 Corporation (Las Vegas) released its proprietary, secure driver for the Micros 9700 POS system, which ensures that no cardholder data is ever stored in the POS application, database or server. “This completes Shift4’s suite of drivers for legacy Micros systems, which accelerates our customers’ ability to become secure and greatly simplifies PCI compliance efforts without the financial burden of system replacement,” remarked John Mann, VP of Sales, Shift4.
Shift4’s PABP-validated 3700, 8700, and 9700 drivers support the complete feature suite of the Micros system with the addition of integrated gift card, PIN debit, signature capture, customer-initiated tip, and dynamic currency conversion capabilities. Approved by Fortrex Technologies for Visa’s list of Validated Payment Applications, the drivers require simultaneous use of Shift4’s secure payment gateway, Dollars On The Net, with Tokenization technology.
Tokenization technology protects stored data by replacing real cardholder data in the files and logs of the POS with an alphanumeric, random “token.” This means that if the Shift4 driver is installed on an older, non-compliant legacy system, the driver makes it secure and brings it into compliance. Tokenization technology was released into the public domain by Shift4 in 2005.
Channel Factoid
Business owners will employ a variety of tactics to manage through the current economy. Nearly six in ten entrepreneurs (56%) find themselves reducing or accepting lower profit margins, which is also the top tactic for business owners in the services sector (48%). Half of business owners (51%) find themselves working longer hours in an effort to manage, with retail business owners most likely to work longer hours (64%). Just under half will cut business or capital expenses (49%), will raise prices (48%), or will cut back or delay marketing expenses (46%). Business owners in the manufacturing sector are among the most likely to raise prices (63% vs. 60% of retailers and 40% of services companies). From the American Express Open Small Business Monitor.
ALL IN THE FAMILY
Radiant Steps into Payment Processing
Radiant Systems (Atlanta) has launched Radiant Payment Services, its new business unit that provides electronic payment processing to U.S. hospitality and retail businesses and furthers the company’s push into the recurring services model (which now accounts for one-third of revenue). In making the announcement, Radiant cited its goal of raising the bar on customer service by providing competitive pricing, increased accountability from a single vendor, an exceptionally high level of security for transaction data, and overall statement simplification. It also emphasized that going forward it will continue to offer an open POS solution that supports third-party payment processing services.
The new service, kicked off this month, already has 5,000 stores and restaurants as customers due to Radiant’s previous existing relationship with RBS Worldpay, formerly RBS Lynk. Radiant Payment Services will be lead by industry veteran Scot Sasser, and already has been staffed with 25 employees. According to Sherry Spreter, Direct Marketing-Hospitality Division for Radiant, the new service will be offered through the POS vendor’s resellers nationwide.
“Our customers continue to ask our company and our channel partners to provide additional business services,” commented John Heyman, CEO of Radiant Systems. “For more than 20 years, Radiant has been a trusted brand providing the most reliable and innovative point-of-sale technology in the industry. Now we are responding to the desire our customers have expressed to us around payment processing. As an integral part of the entire POS solution, this new service was the right next step.”
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