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We’re very proud to announce that Tina Hand, our Head of Systems Support, has been confirmed as a finalist at the national Women in Tech Excellence Awards. Tina is up for ‘IT Leader of the Year’, with other finalists in her category representing brands such as HSBC and Arsenal Football Club, after the Women in Tech Excellence Awards received over 800 nominations. This is the fourth year that the awards have run although, due to Covid restrictions, this year’s awards are due to take place virtually on Tuesday 1 st December 2020. Tina said: “I’m so pleased to be a finalist for the Women in Tech Excellence Awards. As anyone who’s worked with me will know, I’m not keen on talking about myself so it’s amazing to be nominated by the Retail Assist team. Whilst my role is focused on strategy and service delivery, culture is so important to me and I had a very clear vision in how I wanted our Help Desk culture to be for the people working on it. My people are my main motivation and I like t...

We’re delighted to announce our latest Learning and Development Specialist, Trisha Sheehan. Trisha first joined Retail Assist four years ago as a Help Desk call analyst; her customer-centric approach saw her progress to Team Leader, before gaining specialist client training and providing support to her team as a Client Lead Analyst. Trisha said: “As a Learning and Development specialist, I give support to the Retail Assist team with all their learning and development needs, with my current focus being on developing our IT Help Desk . This includes a variety of approaches, from creating and delivering different specialist sessions in customer service to creating client briefing packs. The support we give is crucial to maintaining best practice and also helping to develop our team members, no matter what point they are in their career. “I’ve enjoyed several promotions since joining Retail Assist four years ago and I’ve seen first-hand that, with the right support and training, there ...

Our solution, OMIO PIM , has a PXM-approach and we’re often asked what this means. PXM is one of the latest retail technology buzzwords and, essentially, it’s the next evolution of PIM. PXM can bring so many benefits to brands, their teams and to their customers alike; in fact, the benefits it brings are integral to the future of retail. Meet PXM Where traditional PIM (product information management) systems were purely about managing product information within an organisation, PXM (product experience management) allows retailers to create many optimised versions of a product that is applicable and adaptable for every marketplace. It creates the right user experience per channel; buyers and merchandisers can create many optimised versions with data that supplies the customer’s demands, especially crucial when research shows that 76% of global consumers expect companies to understand their needs and expectations (Salesforce 2018). 76% of global consumers expect companies to understa...

As much as many people might be looking forward to 2020 being over, it's now less than 100 days until Christmas. Just as retailers are releasing and uploading their AW20 new season products, the run up to Christmas (and potentially Black Friday, too) has already begun… Yet, this year is by no means a normal one – so what will this year’s peak trading look like? And do you feel ready? Retail Opinion We love listening to Essential Retail's Retail Ramble podcast and last week's topic looked at just this issue. Caroline Baldwin, editor at Essential Retail, was joined by Beth Horn, Facebook's head of industry for retail and ecommerce to talk about planning for peak trading in the middle of a pandemic. Beth said: “What's been most interesting to me is that I think we've seen about 5 years of acceleration and growth in 5 or 6 months and so whether that's on the consumer side of how people are discovering new brands, discovering new products, being more open to...

Written by Anna Murphy, Communications Lead Insurance: you don’t always appreciate it until something goes wrong. However, what if your insurance policy could predict and then stop issues before they had even happened? When it comes to our retail IT operations team, they’ve got everything covered. This week, we were absolutely delighted when our IT operations team hit a huge milestone mark, having completed 10,000,000 checks on our customers’ systems to ensure that their systems could trade as usual – as if nothing had happened… Dan Smith, our CEO, said: “We’re absolutely thrilled to have hit this huge number of checks across our client base and we’re also very proud of our teams for supporting this. Over our 21 years of providing IT support and solutions to our customers, we’ve always believed in offering proactive help. Retail Assist’s culture focuses on continuous improvement and that has prevented the potential interruption of these incidents even happening.” Check It Out Ja...

There’s many pressures on retail, but we don’t believe that commerce has to be complex. Implementing a solution such as a retail supply chain system allows your brand to work smarter, not harder.   What is Retail Supply Chain Management? Essentially, good retail supply chain management is about delivering your products to customers as quickly as you can whilst ensuring that you can increase your bottom line. Using a supply chain management system gives your brand a competitive advantage, so that you can increase sales whilst your customers can happily receive the products they want. Win, win! We’ve been supporting retailers for decades, so we developed our retail supply chain system, Merret Pro , to support the needs of retailers. Whilst we don’t like to brag, Merret Pro is used at many retail brands from Morrisons’ Nutmeg to Harvey Nichols , to name just a few.   Meet Our Retail Supply Chain System: Merret Pro During COVID-19, retail stores have seen many challenge...

When we made predictions for 2020 , none of us could have quite foreseen the disruption that COVID-19 was about to bring. Whilst there have been some positive developments and lockdown measures lifting recently, there has also been the implementation of local lockdowns and government advice changing to reflect the evolution of this virus’ impact on our society. It can be hard to know when “normality” might return and, as we move into the second half of the year, it’s important to proactively address any issues that your business might face, whether that’s right now or in the future. With our tech experts and decades of IT experience , here’s how we can help. Reduce Your IT Costs Outsourcing your IT to us can bring cost savings of up to 30%. Our award-winning team (which you can read more about here ) act as an extension of your existing team and whether that’s through project support , tech support or even through our Help Desk , we can scale our offering to meet your requirement...

We’re usually providing award-winning IT support to national and international retail and hospitality customers, but this time our latest client had quite a different challenge for us. We were contracted by Nottingham City Council with a very important project. The project brief explained that they needed us to reach out to local independent businesses on Nottingham’s high streets as they started to re-open, with retail reopening on 15th June and then hospitality on 4th July. Partly funded by the European Regional Development Fund and the UK government, vital messages about reopening needed to be shared quickly with as many businesses in Nottingham as possible. At the same time, the availability of additional support for businesses, such as government support grants available to businesses who had been negatively impacted by COVID-19, needed to be communicated to ensure businesses could survive the pandemic and have every opportunity to thrive after it. In just 3 weeks, we put tog...

We’re now four months into lockdown and how time has flown! What was once unthinkable – to imagine a large chunk of the country’s workforce working completely from home – has now become the norm and it’s hard to imagine when we’ll return to our former office-based lives. This week, we continue our #WFH Diaries, gaining a sneak peek into Danielle Bamra’s approach to working from home. Danielle is a Client Account Manager in our Client Services team and lives at home with her husband, Raj, and their Poochon, Rusty.   Hi Danielle! What’s your current working routine? Normally, once I'm up and ready, I meet with the Client Services team. We chat about how everyone is, what exercise we’ve been up to and how we’re all feeling, then I dig into my emails. My role in Client Services changes day to day; sometimes I’m a prepping for a SRM (service review meeting), chasing admin from a SRM and other days I’m on back-to-back calls. However, no matter what the day holds, a Client Services t...

We’re delighted to announce OMIO PIM’s latest customer, luxury womenswear retailer, Whistles. At a time when retailers need it most, OMIO PIM is a SaaS solution that helps retailers control product information and its release to market via a centralised system. Rather than having to juggle multiple spreadsheets that only one person can access at any time, our solution gives retail teams one point of entry to gather and enrich a product’s data across multiple teams, before publishing the information out to all desired digital selling channels. Whistles can look forward to gaining increased speed to market and improved workflow amongst their head office teams. DOWNLOAD THE OMIO PIM SPEED TO MARKET WHITEPAPER HERE>> Ian Hartley, Senior IT Manager at Whistles, said: "We chose OMIO PIM based on its ability to improve workflow management and streamline data movement between third parties and concessions. Our long-standing relationship with Retail Assist means that we can tru...

Written by Anna Murphy , Communications Lead At Retail Assist, we’ve witnessed the immense impact that COVID-19 has had on our customers. From the closing of our high streets to helping our customers move their entire head offices to home working, there’s been an incredible amount of change in such a short space of time. And now, with store re-openings on the horizon, more change is on the way in terms of how retailers help to keep their staff and customers safe. That’s where we step in. Our new software, OMIO Motion, has been brought to the market to help retailers get back up and running as quickly and as safely as possible. To enable retailers to welcome staff and customers back into their stores and to start their store estate safely trading again. What is OMIO Motion? OMIO Motion helps your stores to monitor and alert external queues for distancing and to check on the overall well-being of your queueing customers and, unlike other monitoring software, it also caters for multi...

Written by Anna Murphy , Communications Lead It’s a fantastic time to be a consumer. Never before has so much choice been available to us, with a variety of channels, delivery options, ways of shopping, payment options and even discounts. In fact, we now approach online shopping with the same approach as trying things on in changing rooms – we can take in as many items as we like, try them on and return the items we don’t want to buy, all without having to pay a single penny. However, even better than a changing room experience is that this can now be done in our own homes, all without getting hot and bothered or even having to queue to wait for an available cubicle to become free. All this and throw in a free – and often speedy – delivery service and where once online orders might have been arduous and with tricky returns processes, now the shopping experience has evolved. Many consumers have become used to ordering lots of items from a variety of stores, to find the perfect item o...

Written by Anna Murphy , Communications Lead I still remember the excitement when they would arrive; shiny, heavy and filled with new, beautiful things. My mum was a firm subscriber to the Next catalogue and we’d also dabble with Littlewoods, Freemans and La Redoute. I’d browse the pages and turn the corners over on the pages with the items I liked – sometimes out of hope more than reality – and, once Mum had vetted them (always a tough pitching process), we’d put an order in. I remember thinking how impressive it was that Mum could ring up and then, days later, our items would arrive..! That wonder at a now streamlined process seems quite quaint now, in a world where we expect items to be delivered immediately, usually for free and to a location of our choice. But as we make moves into this new decade and the technological advances that it brings, is shopping online really all that different to the catalogue shopping days of old? From catalogue to online For many years, catalogue ...

Written by Anna Murphy , Communications Lead Warm showers, a hot meal and a strong support network might be essentials that many of us take for granted. But, at Nottingham’s Emmanuel House, all of these things come as part of the vital service that they provide to the city’s homeless and vulnerable adults. In December, Retail Assist took part in Emmanuel House’s Lunchtime Scheme, where businesses could sponsor a December lunch. After a visit and tour of the centre by Retail Assist’s Chief Executive Officer, Dan Smith, Head of Marketing, Alex Broxson and Communications Lead, Anna Murphy, they found it to be a very humbling and emotional day, understanding the stark reality that many people face daily. It costs an average of £1,400 per day to run the support centre and, following the December visit, Retail Assist sponsored this amount to fund the centre for one whole day on 1st February 2020. And now, Retail Assist’s Dan Smith has a challenge for other businesses, too. Dan explain...

Written by Anna Murphy, Communications Lead Committed, highly capable, creative and calm under pressure: we’ve always known that Andréa Williams, our marketing officer, is brilliant but now she’s got the award to prove it! Nottingham Trent University (NTU) named Andréa their Placement Student of the Year (SME) after she completed a year in our Nottingham head office. Andréa said: “My placement year at Retail Assist was such a great experience and I've found what I learnt so valuable in helping to complete my final year of my degree.  The team were brilliant at always sending opportunities my way which I'm really grateful for!". Last year, NTU had over 1,350 students completing a year in industry and the other winners included placements held at professional services firm Grant Thornton, Toyota and Unilever. Alex Broxson, Head of Marketing, said: "From the interview process, Andréa stood out. She has gone from strength to strength, bringing new ideas to the role;...

Written by Anna Murphy , Communications Lead What comes first? No, we’re not talking about a chicken here. Instead, which comes first in this instance: does a good retailer follow the shifting demands of a customer or, instead, lead them to develop new expectations? Whether you think in-store retail experiences have been altered by forward-thinking retailers, leading their competitors to play ‘catch-up’, or whether you believe it’s more driven by consumer wants and needs, at the centre of every side of the argument lies one thing: digital technology. NRF 2020: Retail’s Big Show takes place in New York City today and tomorrow; with the angle of ‘2020 Vision’, the show promises to showcase the technology that retailers can adopt to have a ‘visionary’ digital strategy of the future. But the future doesn’t need to be a far away concept: so what can retailers do to future-proof their store estates now in order to provide a positive customer experience? The obvious place to start: on...

Written by Anna Murphy , Communications Lead, and Andréa Williams , Marketing Officer 2019 has certainly not been without its events: a general election, Brexit (almost!), the first sub two-hour marathon, another royal baby and England nearly winning another rugby world cup have all captured just some of the headlines this year. So, as we all reach the end of this year – and this decade – it gives us a chance to reflect on the year we’ve also had and a few of our own headlines. Thank you for all of your support over the last year. From us all here at Retail Assist, we’d like to wish you all a wonderful, successful and prosperous 2019. Happy new year! January We kicked off the year by attending the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) Big Show. Held in New York City, Alex Broxson, Head of Marketing, and Anna Murphy, Communications Lead, represented Retail Assist at the show, vlogging live from the show floor. Read their blogs from Day 1 and Day 2 , and also to watch their videos fr...

Written by Anna Murphy , Communications Lead Peak trading is here. Retail’s busiest time, followed by Easter and Halloween, has landed with a bang and, with it, has brought some much-needed festive cheer to an otherwise challenging industry environment. But just how good was Black Friday 2019 and what does it suggest about Christmas shopping and the more traditional Boxing Day sales? Black Friday As predicted in our annual Black Friday survey , 2019’s Black Friday sales proved to be a hit. In fact, the British Retail Consortium found that November clothing sales were up 6% for the period from 27 October to 23 November, compared to the same period last year. Helen Dickinson, chief executive at the British Retail Consortium , said the figures suggested shoppers were “ready to take advantage of the great bargains available, both online and on the high street”. The good news continued for the high street, as Black Friday footfall rose by 3.3% year on year compared with the equivalent...

Written by Anna Murphy , Communications Lead The new year also brings a new start and, if one of your new year’s resolutions is to embrace a new challenge in 2020, then look no further… with a vibrant office environment, an ever-evolving technology industry and brilliant people, why not join Retail Assist? We’ve gone behind the scenes to bring you a sneak peek into what it’s like to work here, with insights into the industry that we operate in and the buzzing environment in our workspaces. Watch the video below to see some members of our team from our Nottingham-based head office and Help Desk, and from both our Northampton App Centre and Data Centre, for further insights into what it’s like to work at Retail Assist. Click here to watch the video on YouTube Our Industry The industries which Retail Assist operates within are certainly fast paced. Alex Broxson, Head of Marketing, said: “We have some fantastic brands that we get to work with across retail and hospitality, and they...