The Retail Innovators
Follow us
ISO/IEC 27001 certification for information security
© 2018 - 2024 GK Software SE, Germany
GK Software today announced that it was named a Representative Vendor in the 2021 Gartner Market Guide for Retail Unified Price, Promotion and Markdown Optimization Applications (Gartner subscription required). Gartner’s report notes, “Retail CIOs can use this research to understand why AI-driven, unified price optimization solutions are required to strategically price for unified retail commerce as well as to help them identify providers in this market.”
According to Gartner, “Dynamic pricing algorithms for B2C organizations help maximize revenue from services, experiences and related products by identifying the optimal price, based on real-time supply and demand, promotional cadence, competitors’ pricing and customers’ behavioral profiles. Pricing for services, experiences and related products is dynamic as it leverages availability as a key element to maximize capacity. Done correctly, dynamic pricing can provide value to both an organization and a customer.”
GK was selected as a vendor for its Dynamic Pricing by GK solution, an AI-enabled solution that allows retailers to optimize their omnichannel pricing strategies in real time and at scale, based on the full scope of their available customer and market data. Dynamic Pricing by GK seamlessly integrates with emerging and established technologies that make real-time in-store price updates and personalized pricing a reality. It allows for faster, more accurate pricing optimization by proactively adjusting pricing for every customer, on every channel, based on the unique context of every emerging interaction, in real time.
“It is a daunting and highly intensive process for retailers to keep track of thousands of prices and how best to optimize their pricing strategy and execution,” said Michael Jaszczyk, CEO, GK Software USA. “That’s why dynamic pricing is key to make real-time in-store price updates and personalized pricing a reality. We believe that Dynamic Pricing by GK was recognized by Gartner because the solution allows retailers to support pricing optimization strategies and enable analysis and price-setting automation consistently with every customer, building revenue growth that protects brand value and margins.”
View the Market Guide for Retail Unified Price, Promotion and Markdown Optimization Applications here (Gartner subscription required).
Gartner, Market Guide for Retail Unified Price, Promotion and Markdown Optimization Applications, Robert Hetu, 6 January 2021.
Traditional shopping methods have taken a backseat to online traffic growth as a result of COVID-19. According to Digital Commerce 360, U.S. consumers spent $861.02 billion online in the U.S. in 2020, a 44% increase compared to 2019. Now, there are many ways shoppers engage with retailers beyond associate assistance in the store.
Whether shopping online or in store, many consumers are opting for contactless options. The challenge is that with contactless, delivering exceptional service on each and every touchpoint becomes much more crucial.
The most successful retailers have already embraced the omnichannel journey.
It shouldn’t matter where or how a customer shops, as every touchpoint is as important as the last. In fact, a shopper may even start their journey in one place, like a mobile phone, and complete it in on another, such as in the store or on a desktop.
This blending of shopping touchpoints has become commonplace. New advancements like BOPIS and curbside pickup continue to mix the online and brick-and-mortar experience. As well, existing technology have emerged as contactless options, like the QR code.
Giving consumers the ability to self-navigate online and in store is just as important now as it is to have trained associates in a physical store. Many shoppers today are looking to minimize the number of interactions and the time it takes to complete a sale – whether face to face or through clicks. Retailers must focus on streamlining processes to reduce friction and meet a shopper’s individual needs.
If a shopper knows what products they’re looking for, then finding them quickly and ensuring a fast and easy checkout process is key to guaranteeing their loyalty. For example, in a grocery store, self-checkout lanes or mobile scan and go options can offer a faster payment option.
For online shoppers, retailers should look to cut down on the time it takes between “add to cart” to “checkout.” This can be done by recommending items based on past purchase information. Another way to reduce checkout time is to securely store credit card information for a one-click checkout.
Our solutions are designed to uniquely serve customer needs regardless of shopping channel. As consumer behavior continues to shift toward contactless preferences, ensuring the best quality of service is critical. Reach out to learn how we can help you.
According to Forrester, more than one-third of U.S. online adults want retailers to do more to offer them personalized experiences. In the years after the turn of the millennium, simple algorithms implemented recommendations such as “customers who bought this product, also buy these products,” but over time personalization made its mark in new and innovative ways in online shops, newsletters or apps.
Intelligent systems now interact in real time with every single customer and show suitable products and content in seconds based on shopper click behavior. Through personalization, retailers can display the “right” products, tailored to the preferences of unique shoppers.
Let’s explore five methods for intelligent personalization that will inspire your customers and boost sales:
Take a shopper who puts an item in their basket, but does not purchase the product because it’s not exactly what they had in mind. Implementing product recommendations based on image similarities can help fill this gap by recommending the shopper’s ideal product. For example, AI algorithms can analyze all product images and recognize similar shapes and colors, showing all red long sleeve women’s tops.
Recommendations based on image similarities can also be filtered based on information in the product master data. For example, you can recommend only products from a certain category or certain brand.
Linking product recommendations and price can help you achieve key KPIs. If you want to increase shopping cart value, you can set the corresponding minimum price for product recommendations. For example, you can set product recommendations to be a maximum of 5% cheaper and a maximum of 40% more expensive than the displayed product.
Another way to link recommendations and KPIs might be by increasing sales with a daily deal. In order to encourage as many visitors as possible to use the daily deal, it is best to align it with the preferences of the shoppers. So, if you show the customer an item from their favorite category or a product that is visually similar to the promotion, the chance that they will be interested in purchasing the product is higher than with a more generic deal.
Aligning recommendations with KPIs can also reduce cart abandonment -- 69% of shoppers abandon their carts. After defining a certain time window, or other criteria, an intelligent personalization solution can display a discount or free shipping incentive to encourage a shopper to complete their purchase.
Making customers aware of other items and product categories you sell is essential. Dynamic recommendation boxes allow customers to click on their favorite category to reveal personal items tailored to their preferences. What’s more, this increased interaction with the customer provides the personalization software with additional data for targeted personalization.
Online shoppers are often willing to share their interests and preferences if it helps them receive better recommendations or tailored deals. In fashion retail, customer profiles can include information on clothing style, preferred fit or favorite colors. Information about skin type or eye color can be noted in the beauty segment.
With this additional information applied to a product segment, retailers can further increase the quality of recommendations, increase the satisfaction of customers and ultimately generate more sales.
When online customers are looking for gifts, inspiration can be helpful. Consider a shopper looking for a child’s birthday present. If the shopper is searching for clothing in a certain size, why not provide receive recommendations for toys that correspond to the child's age?
This can be achieved by coupling the clothing size sub-category with the toys sub-category for a certain age group. Or you can use the shopper’s previous purchases to determine the age of the child. Based on the age, you can generate product suggestions in the regular newsletter that "grow" with the age of the child.
With these five strategies, retailers are better able to understand their shoppers on an individual level, providing a higher quality of service. It’s time for personalization to move away from a concept, and toward a proven, successful practice in your business. Are you ready? Reach out to us today.
Because the BSI set further standards, recertification was necessary and this has now been achieved on schedule. This means that the retail trade and other sectors have available a modern and forward-looking cloud solution, which has been certified and can be used in a legally watertight manner.
As the Deutsche Fiskal interface can be connected up very quickly and with very little effort, even companies, which have not yet decided to install Fiskal Cloud, will still be able to make use of a cloud solution within the statutory deadline. Deutsche Fiskal is therefore providing support for this and making available special consulting packages to enable firms to make a rapid switch.
Fiskal Cloud has been in use in standard operations for almost three months now and several hundred customers, including some of Germany’s largest retailers, have already linked up to the system. As a result, several million transactions are signed every day. This figure will continue to increase significantly when all the customer systems are connected by 31 March.
Thanks to the modern cloud solution provided by Deutsche Fiskal, retailers and other companies affected by the German Cash Register Anti-Tampering Order can prevent a situation where each individual till device has to be equipped with special, additional hardware. At the same time, any changes to the statutory standards can be introduced centrally in the cloud. Numerous large retailers and operators with large numbers of installations in other sectors have focused on a cloud solution from the outset, as they wished to avoid hardware-based solutions involving huge amounts of time and effort and differing certification periods. As a result, many large store-based companies, including almost all the customers working with the parent company, GK Software, and AWEK, have opted to use Deutsche Fiskal.
Deutsche Fiskal also offers a hybrid variant, Fiskal Cloud offline, which enables mixed operations between systems connected to Fiskal Cloud online and those that are mainly operated offline. This means that even special situations, which do not have a permanent online connection, can be handled too. Deutsche Fiskal also provides a solution for storing data in a legally compliant manner – Fiskal Cloud Archiv.
Deutsche Fiskal was founded as a fully-owned subsidiary of GK Software SE in March 2019 and it focuses exclusively on the topic of fiscalisation. The company, which has its headquarters in Berlin, has developed a cloud solution for handling fiscalisation in Germany in conjunction with D-Trust, a Bundesdruckerei company. This solution is now available to all providers of recording systems and can be connected up in a very flexible manner via open interfaces. Deutsche Fiskal also provides a hybrid solution so that companies can also benefit from the advantages of a central application in environments that do not have any permanent cloud connections. Deutsche Fiskal also offers a legally compliant and fully integrated archive solution, Cloud Archiv, so that Fiskal cloud data can be transferred to a long-term archiving facility.
The new customers include a French company for the first time and it is one of the world's 50 largest retailers. In addition, two other retailers opted to introduce full cloud services and will make use of cloud4retail as software-as-a-service (SaaS). The new customers for the Company's core solutions come from countries like Chile, Canada and, for the first time, New Zealand and operate in the food retail, consumer electronics and DIY sectors.
As a result, GK Software was able to gain ten new customers overall on four continents for its core solutions during the 2020 financial year, despite the restrictions placed on sales opportunities. Three more existing customers also decided to switch their operations to OmniPOS during the past year. Deutsche Fiskal was also very successful in attracting new customers for its fiscalisation services.
Overall, the Company was able to sign agreements for cloud services with a minimum order volume of EUR 48 million; in most cases, they will have a term of between three and ten years in the form of SaaS services. Despite the restrictions caused by the Covid-19 crisis, turnover amounting to approx. EUR 7 million was generated in the classic licence business too.
In the light of the results during the fourth quarter, the Management Board expects the Company to meet its forecast for the full year; it believes that this will be accompanied by a slight increase in turnover with a significant improvement in profitability.
A new POS implementation is one of the most expensive IT investments a retailer can make. It requires executive approval and must be done seamlessly so no business is lost in the transfer process. As a result of a retailer’s reluctance, they are often stuck with a POS system that can’t quickly adapt to their needs, ultimately standing as an inflexible and rigid barrier to ensuring customer satisfaction.
So, what if a POS could operate more like a smartphone, allowing retailers to easily add new third-party capabilities and tools as their needs evolve? That’s the concept behind our Omnibasket Developers Portal and Innovator Partners Program.
The platform serves as a sandbox where developers can use the platform’s web services through APIs. Now third-party solution providers can easily integrate their applications, giving retailers unprecedented flexibility by enabling them to choose from a growing number of solutions that complement GK.
For example, developers can utilize basket capabilities, promotions, transaction handling, and more, even in nontraditional touchpoints such as cars, IoT devices and various mobile apps.
It’s now essential to create platforms that have flexible technology, whether by updating basket capability, improving promotions or transaction handling, and managing POS updates. And a cloud-based platform is a critical foundation to ensure that the retailer can continuously adapt to meet their shoppers’ needs. Omnibasket can lower the hurdles for developers looking to successfully make the leap and integrate new features and updates.
Learn more and register for Omnibasket here.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw a shift away from restaurants as indoor dining options halted. It also put a temporary pause on self-service food offerings in the store. This was an unexpected benefit for convenience stores, as consumers wanting fast to-go options preferred pizza, burgers and sandwiches, which are core c-store offerings.
Furthermore, grocery stores and quick service restaurants are evolving to mimic the format of convenience stores. In response, the convenience vertical has increased their food offerings, including fresh options, to rival grocery competitors and maintain a unique advantage. As of 2019, food service – including prepared items – accounted for 22.6% of sales, and 36.4% of profits at convenience stores in the U.S., according to NACS.
With these numbers, food is bringing a whole new opportunity for growth within the convenience category. This then brings up the question - in the time it takes for a consumer to fill a car’s tank, can they also be in and out of a store with hot food in hand?
Because of the pandemic, convenience stores saw an accelerated use of mobile order and mobile pay features as consumers looked for safe payment methods that also eliminated the time they spent in physical stores when picking up food and other items. A fully integrated Mobile POS can implement smartphone-driven benefits across the business, including:
Many consumers are no longer stopping at a convenience store just for fuel. It’s time for retailers to think beyond the forecourt. Self-service and mobile technologies are now the drivers of growth within convenience stores. While foodservice is surging, retailers must take advantage of consumer demand – offering services that match their expectations. Are you ready to deliver them?
COVID-19 has changed much of consumer behavior and expectations when it comes to payment options both in store and online, and many of these changes are expected to stick moving forward. As we begin a new year, we predict the four payment trends that will become even more prominent in 2021, and what retailers must do to prepare.
Looking ahead, BOPIS will likely continue to grow even after the pandemic. In response, retailers will need to ensure that they properly implement this capability not as a temporary solution, but as a permanent long-term fixture. The new look of BOPIS is much “lighter,” and allows for the technology to be deployed instantly, without the need to integrate with existing systems. A flexible, standalone BOPIS solution also provides the option for retailers to address integrations later on, as they have the need or desire to do so.
Mobile ordering, scan-and-pay and cashierless cameras are emerging frictionless technology options that retailers can leverage to eliminate consumer pain points and wait times. In 2021, retailers will also look into implementing connected car capabilities for in-car purchases, giving on-the-go consumers who are making normal or recurring purchases another option to quickly browse and order the items they need. These frictionless payment options will play out in 2021 as retailers look for ways to deliver the speed, ease and convenience that today’s shoppers demand.
The pandemic has ushered in a new use of QR codes as they are a go-to for contactless interaction. QR codes are a critical integration for any retailer looking to establish seamless, contactless experiences for shoppers, while also remaining in control of the customer interaction. Providing QR codes and other forms of digital payments is a key factor for in-store and curbside success. Multiple contactless payment options and creatively enhancing QR codes’ functionality is a win-win for both customers and retailers in the current and post-pandemic era.
The EMV deadline is approaching in April 2021, which means fuel retailers will need to achieve the new EMV standards if they haven’t already. While they’re evaluating existing processes, we’ll see innovative winners go beyond EMV compliance by integrating fuel payments with in-store systems. That way, stores can create one cohesive, seamless journey for the customer that drives a positive interaction and encourages loyalty – presenting a great opportunity to future-proof their payments.
Headless commerce has been a major topic of conversation for several years, especially as it pertains to how retailers can achieve flexibility as they interact with customers via an ecommerce site.
This year, the prominence of ecommerce has skyrocketed because of COVID-19, a reality that has not been more apparent than on Black Friday. Online spending hit a new record,surging 21.6% according to Adobe Analytics, whereas in-store shopping fell 52.1% from last year, according to Sensormatic Solutions.
As the popularity of ecommerce rises, retailers have learned that having control over a shopper's experience, from the first click to the point of purchase, is critical to success.
Headless commerce provides retailers flexibility to master this online experience. Defined as the separation of the front end and back end of an ecommerce application, its architecture provides retailers the ability and flexibility to create and fully manage their own graphical user interface (GUI) for every customer touchpoint. (You can learn more about this in our earlier blog on headless commerce.)
Now, as the growth of omnichannel capabilities has given way to shopper journeys beginning and ending across multiple touchpoints, headless commerce has proved necessary within the physical store as well.
This rise is particularly timely. Through COVID-19, Gartner has found that the importance of digital acceleration has increased in importance. Its recent survey found that 87% of corporate directors deemed technology as having a transformational role in addressing strategic business priorities because:
Let's explore all the benefits headless commerce can provide retailers as they implement this in-store digital transformation.
Headless commerce systems are API-driven, which means they are built to integrate and communicate with other platforms, from ERPs to CRMs. This inherent characteristic means they are unified, because data is transferred quickly and easily between platforms via API. It also ensures easy updates as each system that is connected is updated independently.
In addition, it allows retailers to consolidate technologies. Instead of building one platform from scratch that incorporates a variety of back-end technologies, headless commerce relies on connecting disparate technologies into one platform. This means that a retailer can build a solution that incorporates marketing tech, content management and resource planning, technologies that are not often combined in one platform. With one solution as a source of truth for all activities, headless commerce ensures retailers can be more agile and save on IT costs.
Our cloud4retail platform has benefited first-hand from an API-driven approach. Recently, we launched Omnibasket.com, a developer portal allowing innovators to access resources to help them integrate their own solutions with cloud4retail.
Shopper behavior is constantly changing and almost impossible to predict. For example, contactless payment was a growing trend early this year, but it has skyrocketed during the pandemic as consumers are wary of physical touch. But just because behavior is hard to predict does not mean that retailers can react slowly. In today's environment, it is essential for retailers to quickly update their technology to accommodate evolving needs.
Because a headless commerce system's front-end and back-end are not tightly integrated, or "coupled," a retailer does not have to roll out an update to the entire system, only part of it. Development teams can work in parallel, making changes to the UI or one part of the back-end at the same time. This ensures retailers can deliver on consumer needs quickly while focusing on building the right platform for today's market.
Increased speed to innovation has never been more important. A recent McKinsey survey found that through COVID-19, executives said their companies have made extensive changes with one overriding goal: to increase the speed at which they adjust strategic direction, make and implement tactical decisions and deploy resources. Those who have gained speed outperform competitors by a wide margin on a range of outcomes including organizational health, profitability, growth and operational resilience. What helped them increase speed? Making greater use of technology.
The fact that a headless commerce platform is decoupled means retailers are able to leverage data more readily and with more speed. A unified platform that combines marketing insight, customer data and sales insights is quickly able to power personalized engagement.
Retailers can go beyond a typical, "people who bought this product also bought this product" recommendation to develop recommendations based on deep customer insights. Once a personalized engagement is crafted, headless commerce empowers retailers to deliver messaging across digital platforms in store, whether via mobile app or point of sale technology.
Our Mobile Customer Assistant (MCA) is a great example of this type of technology in use. MCA allows retailers to inform customers of new promotions, loyalty actions or coupons via their smartphone. Combining a variety of technologies, MCA includes QR code, store finder, push notifications vi beacons and intelligent shopping list functionality.
For retailers looking to create an agile, personalized and, most of all, unified customer experience, leveraging headless commerce technologies to power in-store experiences is a perfect fit. Retail customers benefit from the personalized digital experience they desire, while retailers maximize and optimize customer interactions, technology speed-to-market and ongoing operational costs.
If you're interested in learning more about these technologies or how our solutions can help you become more agile, we'd love to connect. Contact us today to learn more.
RBR found that GK Software rolled out more new POS installations in its target retail market (excluding gas stations and hospitality) during this period than any other vendor. The study, which was published October 2020, evaluated the number of new POS installations at retailers with more than 1,000 systems from June 2019 to June 2020.
The report analyzes the global point-of-sale installation base of more than 75 vendors in six regions annually. In addition to the top position in new retail installations, GK Software is ranked sixth in the area of total worldwide POS installations (including gas stations and hospitality).
Across Europe, GK Software was responsible for more new installations than any other competitor with a total share of 20 percent. The company is also the clear market leader in Central and Eastern Europe, and ranked second across Europe in regards to total installations.
As part of its global expansion strategy, GK Software also installed the market-leading POS solution (The Forrester Wave™: Point Of Service, Q3 2018) in new regions and continued rollouts for major customers with branches in the USA, Mexico, Columbia, India, and the Asia-Pacific region.
RBR is a strategic research and consulting firm with three decades of experience in banking and retail automation, cards, and payments. RBR supports its customers with independent advice and information through reports, consulting, newsletters, and events.
The Retail Innovators