It has been a very busy year for Retail Assist in 2013. Not only is it our 15th Year of trading but we’ve had some exciting new product developments and clients on board, so we thought we would provide a recap of our activity throughout 2013.
In January we attended the NRF Expo in New York, where we came across omnichannel solutions to facilitate both the personalisation of message and the development of more joined up communications to customers. The Expo gave us a great insight into current solutions available and the future technologies that are available to retailers.
In February we gained some new clients, and extended service provision with others. Supermarket retailer Morrisons selected our supply chain solution Merret to support the launch of their new children’s wear brand ‘Nutmeg’.
The JacquesVert Group who had recently merged with the ‘Irisa’ group also decided to extend our Merret supply chain solution, already implemented at Jacques Vert, across the entire group of brands. This saw Merret fuelling the supply chain of the entire group, expanding from 4 brands to 9.
March saw omnichannel and international growth amongst Coast, Oasis, Warehouse and Karen Millen brands. With the support of our supply chain solution, Merret, we were able to underpin their future strategies with Merret’s inherent omnichannel functionality, scalability and international trading foundations.
April was the month of award nominations, being shortlisted in both the ‘Sales and Marketing’ and ‘Company of the Year’ categories at the Nottingham Post Business Awards. We were also shortlisted with Jacques Vert Group Plc in the ‘Supply Chain Excellence’ category at the Retail Week Technology Awards.
The results of the Nottingham Post Business Awards were revealed in May, and saw us win Nottinghamshire’s ‘Company of the Year’. We were delighted, as is evident in the video. Check out the winning moment here.
Keeping up our award success, in June we were delighted to win the ‘Supply Chain Excellence’ category at the Retail Week Technology Awards.
In July we held our first ‘Help Desk Advisory Board’. This enabled us to find ways of continually improving our service provision, by developing a closer relationship with end users of our service, allowing us to further understand their requirements.
The first ‘Help Desk Advisory Board’ meeting went so well we followed up with a second in August with key topics such as; ring time vs. resolution time, methods of logging calls, help sheet usage and the effectiveness of call categorisation being discussed.
With 17th September marking 100 days until Christmas we developed new exclusive research conducted by OnePoll, revealing shopping strategies that consumers planned to use to deal with Christmas shopping. The research concluded that people weren’t shopping online simply to save time and money but to avoid hectic shopping conditions.
September also saw us awarded ‘Supplier of the Year’ at the Bidvest Logistics and 3663 internal awards. This was a fantastic achievement for us, and one we were very proud of as we were put forward by Bidvest Logistics themselves, and subsequently won from the entire supplier base of both Bidvest Logistics and 3663.
In October we held our 3rd ‘Help Desk Advisory Board’ meeting at our Nottingham head office. The main aim of this meeting was to see how suggested solutions had been received. We gained a very positive response from store staff at this meeting and enabled us to develop plans for future innovation driven by the users themselves.
November saw us shortlisted for the ‘Oracle Retail Week Awards 2014’ alongside @JacquesVert Group Plc. The project involved a large scale international implementation of Merret across all nine brands of the Jacques Vert Group. This shortlisting is a huge achievement for everyone at Retail Assist and we look forward to attending the awards ceremony in March 2014.
December has seen us host a number of successful client events to embrace the festive season. The future looks set to be as busy as 2013, if not more so, with some exciting new clients to be revealed soon. With continuing developments in technology, particularly in wi-fi and cloud computing, retailers’ plans to expand internationally are going to become much easier. With this in mind we expect to see an increase in international activity in 2014 throughout Retail Assist, Merret and The Help Desk, whilst continuing to support and grow with our existing clients as we finish the year supporting over 48 brands.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all at Retail Assist.
It has been a very busy year for Retail Assist in 2013. Not only is it our 15th Year of trading but we’ve had some exciting new product developments and clients on board, so we thought we would provide a recap of our activity throughout 2013.