Innovation is a must-have when whirlwinds reign that can either recreate business or wipe them out. With its ability to analyze shopper movement within the store, iInside provides intelligence, capabilities and actionable insight for retailers.

1. A S U P P L E M E N T T O R I S N E W S
Innovation is a must-have
when whirlwinds reign that
can either recreate business
or wipe them out
W it h S h are d I nsi g h t F rom pro d u c e d b y

2. R
26 J U N E 2 0 1 3 R I S N E W S . C O M
The Innovation Dilemma
therefore ignored the upstart MP3.
Sony owned one of the largest
music organizations on the planet
but never leveraged it into something
like iTunes. Sony owned a major Hol-
lywood studio and didn’t shift into
streaming video to become Hulu or
Netflix. And, finally, Sony was the
premier electronics manufacturer in
the world but never made a meaning-
ful move into mobile phones.
Instead of focusing on innovation,
Yahoo and Sony chose to become high-
ly efficient companies because that’s
where the money was. But making
money is a great and wonderful thing
until the day it stops and your finely
tuned machine hurtles over the cliff.
“The era of true retail innovation
has arrived,” says Jeff Roster, research
vice president for Gartner, in the 2013
RIS/Gartner Retail Technology Study.
Roster adds that the forces of innova-
tion are producing “a whirlwind that
will either recreate businesses or level
them.”
Retailers with effective and efficient
systems in place are like sports cars
with finely tuned engines. They are
fast but they are not guaranteed
a checkered flag at the end of the
race. In fact, retailers with smoothly
humming engines can run their or-
ganizations right off a cliff in trans-
formational times like these when
innovation becomes the necessary
ingredient for success.
Think of Yahoo and Sony, two great
companies that changed the world.
Yahoo was the first and fastest sports
car on the information superhighway
back in the day. It owned the Internet
desktop, but just when profits started
to roll in Yahoo became conservative
and opted to preserve corporate val-
ue. As Yahoo was idling along at the
head of the pack it ignored opportuni-
ties that were seized by such upstarts
as Amazon, eBay and Google.
However, Sony’s example makes
Yahoo pale in comparison. Sony
owned the Walkman market and
CLOUD-BASED FLexibility
Fortunately for retailers, there is an
innovative technology that provides
a pathway around the whirlwind. The
cloud delivery model has emerged as
a unique method for retailers to leap-
frog their current limitations and end
up with a 21st century solution set. It
lets retailers quickly add advanced e-
commerce and omnichannel capabili-
ties without incurring heavy upfront
costs. In addition, it is ideally suited
to support rapid expansion into global
markets.
Cloud technology is the founda-
tional model upon which Demand-
ware has been built and it takes the
concept a step further by not only de-
livering an e-commerce solution but
by tightly coupling a related solution
set together to create a robust om-
nichannel platform.
A good partnership with a cloud-
based vendor helps retailers stay
ahead of the curve by adding a power-
ful member to the innovation team.
“Last year Demandware had six ma-
jor releases with 44 revenue-driving
features introduced into our plat-
form,” says Rob Garf, vice president
of product and solutions marketing
for Demandware. “Our community
is constantly innovating and pouring
enhancements into the platform. Our
clients take advantage of them with-
out the disruptive nature of a tradi-
Investing in efficiency is not enough when whirlwinds blow that will either
create new businesses or destroy old ones
BY JOE SKORUPA
The era of true retail innovation has arrived
and it is producing “a whirlwind that will
either recreate businesses or level them.”

3. R I S N E W S . C O M J U N E 2 0 1 3 27
To get to a level of granularity,
sensing devices are placed through-
out the store and set up for specific
configurations based on the retailer’s
goals. For example, some retailers
want to see how shoppers move from
department to department. Others
want to learn how customers experi-
ence signage and end-cap displays.
Like the data collected by online
retailers, in-store tracking data has
major implications for store opera-
tions and merchandising. In addi-
tion, by tracking shoppers who spend
time in a particular department and
then comparing conversion numbers
through POS transactions, it is able
to settle questions about showroom-
ing once and for all.
Managing Web Complexity
The proliferation of digital devices
and connectivity methods is forcing
e-commerce retailers to rethink their
performance infrastructure to bet-
ter manage the full range of digital
experiences. Retailers can no longer
assume the vast majority of shoppers
interacting with their digital site will
be doing so by using a mouse or key-
tional software upgrade.”
Reducing upfront infrastructure
expenses is a critical element for
today’s global expansion plans and
cloud technology offers retailers a
unique opportunity for achieving suc-
cess while lowering risks. A great deal
of the process can be streamlined by
opening up an online channel and
using the cloud to establish a local
brand experience with targeted prod-
uct assortments while using a single
instance of all applications.
Power of Traffic Analysis
The use of cookies, website heat
maps and other tracking methods in
the digital realm offers retailers an
unprecedented ability to understand
the behavioral patterns of online cus-
tomers. As analysis of this data began
to produce measurable results for on-
line retailers it became apparent to
brick-and-mortar retailers that they
needed the same ability to aggregate
and analyze shopper behavioral pat-
terns while they were moving inside
the store.
In the age of ubiquitous mobile
devices this concept has now become
a reality. One vendor that offers such
a shopper tracking and analytics so-
lution is iInside, which uses mobile
location services to passively detect
consumer mobile devices within a
store and analyze the in-store path to
purchase.
“We anonymize the signals and
create a unique identifier for each
one,” says Jim Riesenbach, CEO of
iInside. “The data is then aggregated
so that we can follow shoppers’ pat-
terns.”
board. Nor can they assume shoppers
are connecting through fixed net-
works.
“Retailers can no longer think of
their website as one indivisible thing
that’s the same for all users,” says
Mike Afergan, senior vice president
and general manager of Web experi-
ence at Akamai Technologies. “They
need to think about all the different
situations that their Web experience
will be consumed in.”
Due to the explosion of mobile
devices and wireless access points a
new level of complexity is forcing e-
commerce retailers to look for ways
to manage situational (device and
connectivity) awareness. Akamai has
taken an innovative approach to this
problem by developing an intelligent
platform called Aqua Ion that deter-
mines what technologies to apply to
each shopper’s digital device and con-
nection method.
According to Afergan, the platform
is being constantly updated and in-
novations added, which is critical in
an age when whirlwinds and cliffs
threaten even the most finely tuned
sports cars. RIS
tech innovators 2013
Retailers with smoothly humming engines
can run their organizations right off a cliff
in transformational times when innovation
becomes the necessary ingredient for success.

4. The rise of omnichannel retailing has
awakened a hunger for insights among
brick-and-mortar retailers. They envy
digital commerce’s ability to track ev-
ery Web click and mobile finger-swipe
that precisely maps the shopper’s path
to purchase.
The ubiquity of consumers’ mobile
devices, however, is bringing online-
style capabilities into the retail store,
with customer tracking and traffic ana-
lytics tools from companies including
iInside. Their mobile location service
solution can passively detect consum-
ers’ mobile devices within a store envi-
ronment from the signals they send out.
“We anonymize the signals and cre-
ate a unique identifier for each one;
there’s no personally identifiable infor-
mation about the device’s owner or even
the phone. Nothing can be extrapolated
back to the individual customer,” ex-
plains Jim Riesenbach, CEO of iInside,
a WirelessWERX company. “The data is
aggregated so that we can follow shop-
pers’ patterns.”
Different Ranges,
Different Goals
The iInside solution uses a number
of inexpensive sensing devices placed
throughout the store, with the specific
configuration based on the retailer’s
goals and the insights they are seek-
ing. “Each one can be set to a level to
see as granular a range as one meter,
or as broadly as 50 meters,” explains
Riesenbach. “If we’re working with a
retailer that wants to understand how
customers are moving from department
to department, and what their path is
through the store, our solution can be
set up with a relatively small number of
devices.”
In contrast, in a grocery store where
the retailer would want to learn about
how customers are experiencing sig-
nage and end-cap displays, the impact
of specific merchandise selections or
the average queue times at checkout,
more devices with smaller ranges would
be needed.
Variety of Insights
“We can see the consumers that go in,
and where their first intent is in the store
– the first department they visit and the
dwell time there and throughout the
store,” says Riesenbach. “There are both
operational and merchandising compo-
nents to the data we can provide.”
For example, iInside is working with
a major consumer electronics chain to
“test different store formats, layouts
and consumer experiences,” notes Ri-
esenbach. “Other clients rely on our
analytics to optimize merchandising
and marketing spend, and to staff more
efficiently and improve operations. The
ability to measure in-store traffic helps
our clients determine the conversion or
sales effectiveness of a single depart-
ment across every store in their chain.
As a result, they’re able to isolate valu-
able performance data that could never
otherwise be available, and make the
necessary adjustments to improve prof-
itability.
“We provide the most reliable, gran-
ular view of what’s happening inside
the store, down to the one-meter zone,”
Riesenbach adds. “With this view, we
can provide insights, capabilities and
actionable results for the retailer.” •
In-store mobile location tracking provides a new level of granular detail
and strategic insight
AddingMobiletoin-storetracking
32 J U N E 2 0 1 3 R I S N E W S . C O M
tech innovators 2013: iinside
Headquarters
Yorba Linda, CA
Website
www.iinside.com
i I n side ,
a WirelessWERX company
I N N O V A T I O N Q U O T I E N T
With its ability to analyze shopper movement
within the store, iInside provides intelligence,
capabilities and actionable insight for retailers.