Takeaways from the BIG Show NRF ’16 - AccuStore

Your AccuStore team traveled to New York in January to take in three days of retail excitement and innovation at The National Retail Federation’s BIG Show.  It’s always energizing to see what’s new, celebrate success, talk about challenges and, of course, meet with retailers like you.

The big theme this year was how to improve the store experience. “The future consumer is going to expect a quality experience and we want to deliver on that,” said Paul Gainer, EVP of Disney Retail for the Walt Disney Company. It ties in well with AccuStore’s mission: to help you know your stores so well that you can seamlessly carry out your marketing strategy in every store and provide a consistent, quality experience for the consumer.

What we learned was very telling

The retailers who stopped by our booth every day shared data dilemmas such as…

• Every department seems to have its own way of collecting information. It seems many retailers still use multiple systems to capture store profile data. That makes it difficult to find what you need when it’s time to make a high-stakes decision.
• How ineffective it is to rely on spreadsheets (Who updated it last? Is it correct?).
• Data inconsistencies lead to ineffective communication. When business units aren’t looking at the same data – or measuring stores against a common benchmark – it’s hard to get everyone on the same page. Store execution suffers as a result.
• The majority of attendees say it’s been a long time since they had a store survey done. That makes it difficult to know exactly what you need in terms of specific signage requirements or number of fixtures you have or equipment needs.

If anything, the show solidified our belief that AccuStore is an effective and easy solution to all of these challenges. That’s one giant step towards improving the store experience and efficiency. We’ll give you more examples in part two of our blog.

Thank you to everyone who stopped by the booth to say hi! If you didn’t get the chance, we would be happy to schedule an in-store demo so you can see AccuStore in action, customized to your needs. Click here to request yours.

P.S. Here’s a link to NRF session materials, if you want to take another look at some of the presentations.