Technology is playing a very important role in retailing, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a larger retailer or a small retailer. You have to go after the best technology.

It stands to reason that, if retailers want to keep up with the changing technology which many of their competitors are moving toward, they cannot afford to skimp on technology. Hence, to stay competitive in the industry, a retailer needs to invest in software to manage inventory, pricing, sales, people, and other forefront operations.

In today’s retail industry, technology allows store owners to automate like never before. The basics for a retailer to improve profit margins are:

* Inventory management
* Vendor management
* Employee management

Dan Jablons, VP Operations at One Step Retail Solutions says, “Hardware technology, like handheld devices for inventory, just validates the good things of a point of sale system. However a retailer has to be focused on having the right merchandise at the right place and at the right time. They have to use the system to evaluate the performance of merchandise in their stores so that they can do a better job partnering with their vendors. And they need to develop statistical reports to help manage employees so that they perform the tasks and functions that management expects them to do.”

Increasingly, technology is seeping into every aspect of retailing. Starting with point of sale with payment options and adding a portable scanner or PDA, then throwing in hardware for security are among the growing needs for a retailer. But these are not what a retailer should focus on alone.

No one is going to win a noble prize for ringing up a sale. Any point of sale product can do that. The important piece of technology in any point of sale product is its ability to produce meaningful, actionable reports that help the owner or manager improve the business,” Jablons says further.
The key goal for retailers is better sales forecasts and better inventory control. Therefore, knowing where your profits are coming from is one way technology will help a retailer manage their business better. It  allows them to generate sales forecasts and make better business decisions overall.

Kevin McAdam, Director of Sales at One Step Retail Solutions, points out, “Without technology, the competition will destroy you. If you just model the most successful retailer, Sam Walton (WalMart founder), who originally thought he couldn’t get past nine stores, technology was the only way he did it.”

McAdam further stated, “One of the ways to use technology to boost profits is knowing where you are making money. I was working with a retailer with five stores, and he had vendors come to his stores to tell the him what his stores needed, and the owner would buy it. He had no idea of the profit margins on what he purchased, so his sales were high but his profit margin wasn’t. So, technology can give you a quick way to know not just what you’re selling but where you are making your money.”

Having the right technology alone may not be enough it seems. According to Jablons, another factor comes into play and carries a massive role in helping retailers succeed, and that is retail consultants.

Jablons believes that a good retail consulting company will make all the difference for a retailer. He states, “Lots of companies have the technology readily available to them through many outlets. The thing I spent a lot of time developing at One Step Retail Solutions is a team of consultants with retail backgrounds. So, they’re not just geeks working on a particular application; they are consultants with retail backgrounds who know and understand retail operations and merchandising.”

“That’s different than a guy who’s just going to tell you what buttons to push. They know the end goal and they visualize that with the retailer to get them there.

Television would probably be the most entertaining invention yet. It is a simple box of pure leisure, where one can just sit back, eat chips, and watch all day long. Anyone can watch TV, since it offers a lot of entertaining shows, full length movies, current news, cartoons, among many others. These programs are being watched by people around the world all day all night, so TV shows are being played nonstop. Such TV programs are being broad casted by several TV networks, be it international or local. These shows offer a lot of topics relating to life, women, health, fashion, travel, cooking, adventure, sports, and the like.

Nowadays, television networks are becoming more realistic in creating television shows for the general viewing public. It seems that people now are entertained by seeing other ordinary people doing extraordinary stuff on air! For the past few years, reality shows has been a hit among viewers around the world. Reality shows are these one hour long programs wherein one can watch several contestants in an unscripted situation battling for something, or showing actual events featuring ordinary people as the cast. There are several classifications under reality shows. TV networks came up with documentary style programs, elimination or game shows, makeovers or self-improvement, renovation, hoaxes, hidden cameras, talk shows, and dating shows.

In watching these seemingly tireless programs, we often see new faces in TV. Since ordinary people are commonly participating in these reality shows, these people are not too comfortable with the camera. More often than not, viewers can get a glimpse of their anxiety as they compete with the other contestants. An example of such would be The Amazing Race. This show is focused on a set of contestants that travels around the world and racing each other in beating several clues that would bring them closer to the monetary prize. Anxiety is seen as they try hard in running through airports, getting flight schedules, understanding a different language, and beating all the other contestants. This kind of scenario makes the show more realistic, since showing anxiety is not a common thing for actors, and that this somehow connects us to being somewhat real.

For a more adventurous show, we watch the popular reality show Fear Factor. Here we see a group of contestants that compete each other by doing something that can be very scary for some, but fairly easy for others. Contestants in this show face fear and anxiety in ways no one can imagine. Eating live insects, jumping off a helicopter roving around three hundred feet in the air, getting locked in a coffin with snakes are just a few of the scariest antics they have. By showing fear and anxiety in the show, it boosts its popularity among viewers, and at the same time makes sense of the whole concept itself.

Entertainment is really evolving into a totally different era. Being real in television is already considered as enjoyment for other people. A sense of fear and anxiety can really hype up the viewing audience. By watching reality shows such as these, it would give us the impression of what’s real and what’s not. Popcorn, anyone?