“And Then the Teller Gave Me This Look Like…”
In 2024, after years of dealing with frequent and extended power outages in our area—sometimes lasting five or six days—we decided to make a big investment in our home. Not only were we installing a generator for emergencies, but we were also retrofitting air...
Enhancing Workforce Management with AI: Transforming Branch Analytics with Intelligence and Insight
In Seven Habits, Stephen Covey told us to "look at the lens before looking through it". With all the technological advances, we are at the high noon on workforce management. It's time to trim away any deficiencies. It's time to look at the lens! What's wrong with WFM...
Banks & CUs should break away from Retail based productivity software
Good governance, privacy and safety also meant a slower rate of adoption of new technology in Financial Services compared to Retail. Case of productivity systems - task management, workforce management, appointments, learning et al - was unique. Most technologies...
Devouring Ina Garten’s “Be Ready When the Luck Happens”
Devouring Ina Garten’s "Be Ready When the Luck Happens" I’m currently immersed in Ina Garten’s new memoir, “Be Ready When the Luck Happens.” It’s not just a read; it’s a delightful experience that’s hard to put down. Ina is such an inspirational figure, and her...
Empowering work choices with NPC
At the heart of exceptional banking services lies a bankers ability to make work choices throughout the day. Like, choosing to switch from a task to attend to customers, or to complete an overdue inspection. Every moment of work time has a dollar value attached to it....
The Benefits of Effective Locations Management
When speaking with retail representatives at numerous trade shows, I've noticed a seemingly hidden, but strangely common problem that each one deals with in their day-to-day workload: obtaining seemingly basic information about their stores. If you ask a district...
Perceived Utility: Why Your Enterprise Can't Have Better Designed Software
I hate making the bed. Folded laundry is as useful to me atop my dresser as in it and, on my desk at this moment, I can reach for a notebook I haven't written in for months, a year-old stack of travel receipts, and a jumble of accessories that arrived alongside a...
Agile Scheduling Trends: The Evolution of Time Studies
As retailers continue to drive efficiency through strategic staffing measures, they quickly learn that software bells and whistles don’t fix a broken labor model. Despite this realization, many businesses still struggle with executing time studies that provide...
The Four Cs Behind Every Successful Software Deployment
Over my years in working within retail, I've come up with a personal philosophy when it comes to driving a successful software development. I call it, "following the four Cs." --- Communication This is self-explanatory. Ensure that you have clear and regular...
Explaining The Nextenture Technology Stack
Explaining The Nextenture Technology Stack As a retail productivity cloud platform, Nextenture encompasses a growing collection of collaborative apps. We use a core platform with the following capabilities: Providing...
3 Features to Reduce Appointment No-Shows
3 Features to Reduce Appointment No Shows Nobody likes the feeling of wasted time, and perhaps no waste of time is more devastating than no-shows. Across all industries, the average no-show rate typically ranges from 10 to 15%. In recent times for retail, this number...
Management of Appointments
An appointment is usually visualized as a commitment between two or more individuals or groups of people to meet at a specified time on a designated date. This may look like a no-brainer for a friend-meets-friend for coffee scenario but a customer appointment in a...
Appointment Booking Vendor Considerations
Selecting the right Appointment Booking software for your business is like conducting interviews for an open position - no matter how rigorous a selection process you go through, the end results are never guaranteed! Moreover, most vendors have the sales and marketing...
Appointment Booking Is Here To Stay!
In 2020, Retail & Service industries relied heavily on appointments for a very simple objective - Regulate the flow of customers and make everyone feel safe. And it worked. Customers booked appointments, they showed up - if they could, and completed the objectives...
Micro Learning Pitfall #3: You’re Missing Out on The Real Benefits of Micro Learning
There are design strategies available to avoid the bookend bloat we discussed in Part 2, it's not inevitable, but a focus on Seat Time alone ignores the under-leveraged benefits of Micro Learning: flexibility and digestibility. The power of Micro Learning isn't...
Why Micro Learning Fails (and what to do about it) Part I
Over the past 5 years, Micro Learning has come into its own, moving from nascent buzzword to the de facto standard when planning next-gen learning rollouts. But is this trend helping, or hurting? Is Micro Learning delivering on the whiz-bang promise of more learning...
Ensuring Associate Safety During Time Studies
There's no getting around it - across the United States, retail has shut down more than 40,000 stores because of the COVID-19 crisis. Yet supermarkets are seeing a spike in traffic and labor demand. Amid droves of mass hiring for grocers comes a greater challenge of...
Effective Staffing & Payroll During COVID-19
Effective Staffing & Payroll During COVID-19 There's no getting around it - across the United States, retail has shut down more than 40,000 stores because of the COVID-19 crisis. Yet supermarkets are seeing a spike in traffic and labor demand. For...
Effective Product Upgrade Strategies
A product upgrade; often those words make even the most seasoned IT or Store Operations professional cringe. Everyone knows that you have to upgrade at some point, but the conversation often starts with how much work (and money) it’s going to take, and the following...
Three Myths of Change Management
January is a time of change, when we look back on the old and forward to the new. It’s the perfect month to talk about change management. After years of watching this service get results that last, I've always wondered what could cause someone to overlook its...
The Island Talks
As a programmer, I got my chance to go on my first work trip abroad: Anguilla in 1998. I boarded the plane after having enjoyed a satisfactory amount of jealousy on my friend’s faces. After all, it’s not every day that one gets to visit the...
