What We Cover

The Retail and Commercial Services venue covers networking systems, devices and new software tools that allow retailers to have increased visibility of the supply chain, gather consumer and product information, improve inventory control, reduce energy consumption, track assets and security and create new customer experiences.

Our coverage of Retail and Commercial Services includes equipment and devices such as point of sale products, vending machines (food/beverages, cigarettes, and higher value products like CDs), service equipment (petrol pumps, washers/driers, refrigeration, and car cleaning), entertainment (gaming machines and sound systems) and signage/displays (billboards, displays). Additionally, we are tracking and analyzing the abundance of new software and data analytics players that are leveraging device, user and infrastructure data to optimize operations and customer needs.

Harbor’s Retail and Commercial Services Outlook

The retail business continues to be a highly competitive, low-margin environment with the entire industry evolving through radical changes to traditional business models. Battered by the fragmentation of traditional mass markets, the challenge of cross-channel interactions, and the impacts of digital technologies, retailers have had to face unprecedented impacts on their business.

Retailing is reshaping itself to accommodate a radically different model of interaction with information-rich consumers. For retailers, advanced technologies must rest on a foundation that is able to supply merchandise to consumers and manage inventory and cash flows effectively. Intelligent device networking and new data management technologies in the retail industry have many potential impacts that range from customer interactions on the front-end of the business to efficiency and productivity impacts on the back end.

Within the retail and commercial services industry new technologies are providing the means for players to operate more efficiently and cost-effectively. Advances in network and computing capabilities are enabling retailers to deploy different IT configurations into physical stores that provide rapid access to customer information, product information and more functionality to staff, including full integration and control of all the assets at the location – climate, lighting, and physical security systems. Increased network bandwidth for video technologies are enabling new customer experience opportunities as well as the ability to monitor and analyze customer behaviors at multiple locations.

New services and technologies are creating new value propositions at the intersection of personalized marketing, mobile marketing, loyalty, and improved user experience. These capabilities and their fusion with seamless payments and data are where the real opportunities reside — commerce that happens anytime, anywhere, and on any type of device where retail activities are seamlessly integrated into a single end-to- end experience— shopping, payment, marketing, loyalty, money management, and offline and online experiences.