Author Archives: Nathan Jokers

via Forbes // My first, large chain store experience in retail was as a blue light special girl for K-mart. For the uninitiated, this meant dragging around a cabinet on wheels about the size of a bathroom vanity. Inside was a car battery, wired to a light at the top of a pole that stuck out through the middle of the cabinet. The light at the top was a flashing blue light, kind of like the old magnet police lights from old movies and TV shows. When I showed up for work, I was given a list and times to run “specials” – blue light specials – in the store. So at the appointed time, I would get on the PA system and announce that there was a blue light special in a specific department, and then I would go to that department with my blue light, and I would use a price sticker gun to manually reprice items that people wanted to buy.

The people who got items repriced would take them to the bank of registers in the front, and the clerk would enter the temporary promotional price, and the customer would walk out happy.

I remember this, and share this, because this was the cutting edge of technology in your average retail chain store in 1988. And I remember the year clearly because it was the year that “Your Simi Valley K-mart!” converted from all manual pricing to… barcodes. Yes, barcodes. The thing that was first used to scan Wrigley gum in 1974.

The first Sunday (day of the new week’s sales) that my K-mart cut over to barcodes, the price file didn’t load. I didn’t run any blue light specials that day, because I spent the whole day first frantically answering price check calls at the registers until we all realized what had happened, and then frantically manually pricing everything with that week’s deals so that we could get cashiers running faster.

It’s hard to believe that only seven years later, Amazon started selling books online.

This was the pace of technology change in retail prior to the internet age. This is the very core of retail’s challenge in navigating the disruptions of the last 20 years. Retailers think it’s totally okay to wait 14 years to embrace a new technology, even when it demonstrably improves operations. Case in point, there are retailers today who are frantically trying to stave off the day their support for Microsoft Windows 7 ends. Microsoft ended mainstream support in 2015, and are finally cutting everyone off (unless you want to pay exorbitant support costs) in 2020. There are even retailers who are trying to save their Windows XP installs.

So it’s with a great sense of irony to find that while retailers may be trying to control – and milk for all its worth and then some – the technology they use to run their operations, it has been consumers who have been driving and defining the technology that retailers use for engagement. And not only have there been more and more touchpoints, but the pace of change has not slowed. If anything, it has only increased.

When it comes to customer engagement, retailers, whether they like it or not, are on the bleeding edge front line. If consumers want to shop and pay on Instagram, retailers better figure it out. If they want to use Facetime or group chats to co-shop with distant friends, retailers need to be there.

The challenge for retailers, who operate thin-margin businesses and don’t have a lot of extra cash available to experiment, is trying to decide when is the right time to “get in” on a new technology. That challenge is no different, when it comes to Augmented Reality. Retailers aren’t thrilled to have to deal with yet another touchpoint for customer engagement. But their ability to avoid it – if consumers adopt – is pretty much zero.

What Consumers Want

If consumers drive engagement technology adoption, then what does their adoption say about how fast AR should come to the retail industry? The numbers are a bit sobering.

While at least 87% of US consumer households have mobile phones today, only about one-third report having used augmented reality (which is most easily delivered via a mobile app). Given the hype over mobile AR games like Pokémon Go, and the number of Snapchat filter selfies there are floating around on the internet, this number seemed low. But when you look at adoption, it supports the one-third number. About one-third of US consumers seem to have downloaded Pokémon Go (whether they are still active users is another matter). And about 30% of US adults (over the age of 18) are Snapchat users.

That may not seem compelling on the surface, but these users are highly attractive to retailers. Of the US consumers who reported trying AR, 41% had income over $75,000 per year, and 81% were 44 or younger.

On the virtual reality side, only 11% of US consumers report owning a VR headset, a surprisingly low number after two holiday seasons in a row that were considered fairly successful for VR, between Playstation, Oculus, Samsung and HTC.

With these rates of adoption, companies that are investing in mixed reality (AR or VR, or XR to mean potentially both) are setting expectations low. Microsoft talks about consumer market penetration of AR in terms of years, and is partly why the company has chosen to prioritize enterprise applications first.

When They Want It

With low penetration rates of both VR (which requires equipment that can get expensive fast) and AR (which is still low even though 87% of households have mobile phones, which means AR apps are just a download away), it seems that consumers aren’t in any great hurry to experience mixed reality in any setting, let alone specifically in retail.

However, the adoption lag hides a level of enthusiasm that retailers should pay attention to. Of the one-third of US consumers who reported using AR, 73% said they were satisfied (or very satisfied) with their experience. AR has the advantage over VR in that it does not have high odds of inducing the “hurl factor” (some people are sensitive to the eye-ear imbalance that occurs when VR replaces visual reality with something that doesn’t match what a person’s inner ear is telling them, with messy results), so the satisfaction levels with AR promise to overall be higher than with VR anyway.

Where retailers should really start to pay attention is when it comes specifically to shopping. Only 10% of consumers say they have used AR or VR while shopping. But another 45% say they would like to try it. And in the same survey, 30% of consumers said they would never go to another clothing store again if AR would allow them to buy the right size clothing with confidence. Those are numbers that promise that, with the right use-cases, consumers could start demanding AR experiences from retailers at a very fast pace, to the point where not having an AR experience becomes a disadvantage.

What Gets In The Way

There are a lot of reasons why consumers are not adopting XR at a faster pace than they are today. For VR, it’s still a novelty, and while you can get VR on the cheap, for the real, immersive experience, that is a big budget investment. The market is still highly fragmented and with lots of walled gardens. Going with one brand of VR means not having access to content from another brand that you might like.

With AR, the content is similarly walled off – every AR experience requires a new app, which must be downloaded and logged into and maintained and remembered. And knowing when AR is available is still a big guessing game.

For both AR and VR, the issue here is about friction – what it takes to get up and running reliably, and how easy it is to continue to use it. If there is a lot of friction, as there is right now, then it’s easier for consumers to not use it, than it is for them to embrace it.

Then there is the problem of ergonomics. If you’re worried that you’ll look silly bumbling around in a VR set, you’re probably worried that you’ll look almost as silly waving your phone around to try to get AR content up and running – if it’s even there to see in the first place. That’s one angle to the ergonomics, that it’s painfully obvious when you’re trying to use it, and there are more people not using it than are using it, so people trying to use it will stand out. Some people like to stand out in a crowd, but many don’t. That will inhibit use as well.

And then there are the plain ergonomics involved in successful use. I was testing out a few AR apps on my phone while sitting on my coach. The use cases were designed assuming the user would be sitting at a table. Trying to get the right angles to use the apps against the backdrop of my sofa arm rest meant holding some uncomfortable poses for arms and neck. I’ve tried multiple VR rigs, and some I have never managed to get to sit comfortably. It’s not a fun experience.

And if you believe that there is a convergence coming with AR and VR – one set of eyewear, with the only difference between AR and VR being the amount of “reality” you let through, there is this reality: 75% of the US population requires corrective lenses of some kind. Right now, VR rigs tend to take the ski-goggle approach – make them big and wide and add lots of padding around the edges, and the VR mask won’t crush your glasses against your face too badly. But it still makes for a less-than-appealing experience. For something of a Google Glass form factor, prescription lenses are going to have to be part of the equation, and let’s not forget bifocals at some point. These issues don’t seem to be much addressed in the discussion of how XR gets adopted.

What Retailers Think

There don’t seem to be a lot of studies diving into retailers’ planned or current adoption of AR or VR in their consumer experiences. In one study, 70% of retailers said they expect to see widespread adoption of AR across their company in the next 3 years, but that study was not focused on consumer experiences, and some retailers have jumped on the bandwagon of using XR for training purposes.

One analyst firm forecasts that by 2022, over 120,000 stores will be using AR smart glasses – this is globally, with the usage split evenly across Europe, North America, and Asia. In the same study (by ABI Research), the firm estimates that 3% of eCommerce revenue will be generated because of AR experiences, or $122 billion in revenue worldwide. It’s not clear exactly how this revenue will be generated – because of direct purchases through the channel, or through influencing sales that are generated in other channels.

The Bottom Line

Right now, the use cases for AR and VR that are focused on customer experiences tend to be very specialized – seeing if the couch will really fit in your house, or what the paint color might really look like on your walls, or what a redesigned kitchen might look like to walk through. Makeup and fashion are getting on board as well, with virtual try-on of makeup looks and colors, and 3D visualizations of clothing to get a better assessment of fit. Some of these work better than others – clothing fit is still a bit hit or miss. What retailers need to figure out is if XR will only ever be limited to these specific use cases, or if its utility can be expanded out beyond these. Buying with confidence is an important value that XR can bring to the shopping experience, but it’s probably not the only one.

In the meantime, until consumer adoption at home reaches a tipping point of some kind – and who knows, the long-awaited Harry Potter AR game may be that tipping point – retailers are going to have to find ways to experiment and stay on the learning curve. If XR is anything like any other technology experience that consumers have adopted over the last 20 years, when it hits, it will hit fast.

via Innovation Management // Advancements in technology are the main cause of disruption across various industries these days. Technology brings numerous benefits and various opportunities for businesses. However, adopting and adjusting to new tech can oftentimes be quite challenging.

This is especially true for industries that have managed to resist technology for some time now, such as the financial industry. Systems in place were sufficient enough and there was really no need for technology to step in.

Still, every system becomes obsolete sooner or later and now the industries that managed without technology so far are starting to rely on it more and more each year. Nowadays, technology has made a significant impact on the financial industry, transforming the financial services and banking sectors with the latest fintech solutions and modern trends. With that in mind, here are a few ways how technology is impacting the financial landscape.

Banking went online

If you want to see the impact technology has made on the financial landscape, you don’t have to look beyond modern banking. Traditionally, banking was something that was conducted primarily offline. People would visit their local bank to transfer funds, pay bills or consult with a banker on various things regarding their personal finances. Today, however, visiting a bank in person is becoming quite unnecessary.

People can access their bank accounts through their computers or phones and conduct any activity online that they would normally go to a bank for. Online banking has evolved quite fast in recent years and more people are using it every day. You can still see a few people go to a bank every now and then, but even that occasion is becoming quite rare. After all, with money transfers, online payments and financial information being accessible via a push of a button, there’s really no need to visit a bank unless you absolutely have to.

More efficient processes

Relying on technology has provided numerous advantages to both financial institutions and consumers alike. As an example, consumers in Australia can conduct a quick credit check online without having to resort to a Credit Reporting Bureau like they used to. On the other hand, financial institutions can improve their own systems by using technology that will help them gather and process information, as well as help them improve customer service.

For instance, chatbot features aren’t uncommon in financial institutions. After all, leveraging the latest technology to provide customers with the right kind of service and support is, in fact, vital for business success. In addition, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) technology has enabled financial institutions to utilize an entirely new level of data analytics and operational efficiency that allows them to not just improve customer service but overall business performance as well.

Faster fraud detection

One of the major concerns every financial institution oftentimes struggles with is fraud. Sooner or later, someone will try to cheat the system and sometimes they’d get away with it. The fraud detection process required a lot of time and resources before technology stepped in. Today, AI’s machine learning, natural language recognition, identification of patterns and processes and deep learning capabilities can make the entire process not just faster, but also more reliable and seamless.

A machine can work much faster than a human can, which has the potential to minimize and mitigate the risks of fraud in the financial systems. AI can analyze numerous factors ranging from consumer behavior to analyzing fraudulent activities to predict and prevent fraud attempts. This sort of improvement provided by the latest technology can help financial institutions improve security, save time and cut costs on crucial financial operations and assessments.

Introducing blockchain

Blockchain technology was introduced to the market with the emergence of Bitcoin, the very first cryptocurrency on the market back in 2009. Digital assets aside, the technology behind cryptocurrencies has been the main focus of fintech developers for some time now. Today, blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize and completely reshape both financial institutions and the financial industry. Blockchain is a form of distributed ledger technology.

Blockchain can provide numerous advantages to institutions, such as lower the costs, improve the speed of transactions, improve the transparency of transactions, as well as numerous other benefits. Blockchain can also replace traditional corporate databases with a decentralized public ledger. The implementation of blockchain applications will disrupt any financial institution with low transparency and limited traceability. However, the blockchain technology is still being developed and there’s still not a viable solution available for the financial sector, which makes the adoption of this new technology difficult and challenging for many financial institutions.

Technology is very disruptive at first towards industries that haven’t relied on technological solutions before. However, no one can deny the numerous advantages and benefits technology can provide to such industries. Technology may have made a significant impact on the financial landscape, but that impact changed the financial industry for the better.

via TechCrunch // Sometimes a “like” in social media doesn’t give the full picture, or you’re just not inspired enough to write a fuller response. Today, LinkedIn  addressed that issue on its own platform, with the introduction of four new reactions people can use in response to posts in their timelines. In addition to “like,” you can now react in four other ways to posts with icons that indicate “celebrate,” “love,” “insightful” and “curious.”

I find it “curious” and “insightful” that there isn’t a “haha” among them. Not many laughs or entertainment to be found on LinkedIn, I guess?

The reactions are rolling out globally to the company’s nearly 600 million users starting today, to both the desktop and mobile apps.

LinkedIn’s rollout comes in the wake of similar moves on other social platforms — perhaps most noticeably on Facebook, which launched an expanded set of reaction buttons more than three years ago.

LinkedIn has never been one for jumping quickly to new trends, but this nevertheless shows that it’s listening and understands that it has to provide more to users to make its platform more dynamic, to help spur more engagement (and in turn more people posting to the platform).

LinkedIn product manager Cissy Chen notes that the company based its selection of reactions on the kinds of conversations that people are already having on LinkedIn — and probably the kinds of conversations that LinkedIn would like to continue to encourage– and also what people were writing most commonly when providing one- or two-word terse responses.

Typically, posts cluster in two groups, she noted: those from people announcing new professional roles or milestones; and those sharing learnings from somewhere else. Hence, the reactions lean in two directions, one giving encouragement and one more contemplative.

LinkedIn I think likely has two wider goals by providing tools like this: one is to get more users engaged on its platform; and the other is to use it as part of its feature moat to remain competitive with other social platforms that might encroach on its space.

In the years since Microsoft acquired the company, I’d argue that the iterations the company has made to different aspects of its service have decreased somewhat. That makes LinkedIn more open to other companies coming in and creating more useful and modern replacements in some of its most lucrative areas of business, such as recruitment.

On the other hand, platforms like Facebook have been quick to add ever more features and functionality.

Facebook may today be far from providing the same kind of recruiter tools, or database of working professionals and their experience; but its own efforts in recruitment services and mentoring are direct competitors to LinkedIn’s social tools for the working world, providing a kind of lite alternative.

For LinkedIn to continue to keep people around, and to attract new users who might otherwise consider newer and less expensive alternatives, even incremental additions like this one can make a difference.

via Engadget // Just as the US was waking up to a lovely Sunday, Facebook was sadly tackling yet another massive outage -- its second one within a month. According to downdetector.com, soon after 6AM ET today, users across the world started experiencing issues with Facebook and its various platforms, including Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. At the time of writing -- well over two hours later -- the services were still down, leaving users unable to load fresh content or message each other, nor could we check the service status on Facebook's developer site. Unlike last time, the company had yet to comment on the situation via Twitter.

The latest incident is just one of the many worrying problems of late coming from this social platform giant. While Facebook blamed a server configuration change for last month's massive outage, it failed to address how up to 600 million user passwords were allegedly left exposed to some 20,000 employees in the form of plain text.

More recently, the company admitted that it had accidentally deleted posts created by its founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, over the years, but stopped short of explaining how that happened. And let's not forget that Facebook is also busy tackling hate speech, fake news and conspiracy theories, though some leaked emails suggested that it was struggling in some areas.

As we wait for Facebook's full recovery before we can spend the rest of the weekend spamming friends' feeds, here's hoping the company doesn't turn such outage into a monthly event.

Update 4/14/19 8:58M ET: Some of the services are gradually recovering, with Instagram and Messenger now working for this author. That said, Facebook has yet to explain the situation on its Twitter page or developer site.