The weekly Retail Tech Roundup compiles technology news across the supply chain, manufacturing, retail, e-commerce, logistics and fulfillment sectors.
Social commerce
BigCommerce/Facebook
BigCommerce has announced the availability of checkout on Instagram for eligible U.S. merchants.
Leveraging BigCommerce’s native integration with Facebook Commerce Manager, merchants can connect their e-commerce storefront’s catalog to Instagram and give customers the ability to buy from their favorite brands directly on Instagram—rather than navigating to a brand’s website to make a purchase—and pay using PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, American Express or Discover.
Brands including Badgley Mischka, Spearmint Love and DressUp have already been testing the new checkout feature through BigCommerce. Checkout on Instagram brings products closer to more than 130 million shoppers interacting with brands’ shoppable Instagram content each month.
Shoppers can store payment credentials within the app to streamline future purchases and complete transactions even faster. Checkout also enables creators to tag a brand’s products on their behalf, launch products directly on Instagram and sell products in Instagram Live.
Installment/localized payments
David’s Bridal has partnered with “buy now, pay later” platform Affirm to enable qualified customers to pay for their purchases over time, with monthly payments and no hidden or late fees, for any purchases over $100.
David’s Bridal joins Affirms network of over 6,000 retail partners and is one of the largest bridal retailers to offer Affirm at checkout. Affirm is available now on the David’s Bridal website and will be available in all 300+ of its store locations in the fall.
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DLocal
DLocal, a fintech company specializing in cross-border payments for emerging markets, is supporting Zara’s e-commerce operations in Uruguay and Paraguay through the use of its payments platform.
Leveraging dLocal’s 360 payments platform, Zara and other Inditex retail brands will be able to accept local credit card payments with the option of monthly installments. The solution allows customers to pay with both international and locally issued credit cards from Mastercard, Visa and American Express, as well as other domestic cards such as OCA in Uruguay.
Product decision making
MakerSights has released Digital Line Review, a digital collaboration tool designed to help brands that shifted to work-from-home operations make smarter decisions on what products to bring to market. The company is extending its platform to enable product, merchandising and sales teams to remotely manage complex assortment reviews, streamline merchandising decisions and reduce time-to-market through faster, more iterative feedback cycles.
Digital Line Review is designed to enable brands to save time and money on global meetings and democratize access to data across the organization. MakerSights said the tool can increase confidence in product decisions by up to 88 percent.
The tool provides users with a look at 3D renderings of the product assortment, internal feedback from regional merchants and sales teams and consumer sentiment on new products in one place. This enables brand teams to evaluate internal and market feedback on new products in a shared workspace instead of relying on a combination of legacy tools like Word documents, spreadsheets, annotated PDFs and lengthy email threads that weren’t designed for complex collaboration.
ERP/EDI
Aptean/Innovative Systems
Aptean, an enterprise software solution provider, has acquired Innovative Systems, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software solutions and electronic data interchange (EDI) mapping provider, for an undisclosed sum.
This acquisition extends Aptean’s industry-focused ERP capabilities to include the apparel, footwear and accessories verticals, adds strategic technologies and diversifies its customer base, while also providing the opportunity to leverage Innovative Systems’ EDI Direct service. EDI Direct is an EDI mapping solution, which enables companies to translate documents into standardized formats to be readily exchanged with trading partners.
Innovative Systems offers an ERP product suite that is purpose-built for the fashion and action sports industries and designed to handle all aspects of a company’s operations, from supply chain to production and distribution. The company’s industry-specific ERP solutions include Full Circle Apparel Software, designed for larger companies and Full Circle Lite, tailored to small to mid-sized companies and available in the cloud.
Supplier Data Reporting
Tealbook
Tealbook, a solution provider that captures and maintains changing supplier information, has released a self-certification program and a Tier 2 supplier data reporting tool. With the new supplier data platform, retailers can scale the impact of their supplier diversity program while reducing the friction that has traditionally been part of the administration process.
Companies looking to receive Tier 2 spend information from their suppliers can invite suppliers to participate and track their progress. Any invited supplier in the supply chain can securely upload spend either quarterly or annually. This spend information is kept private to them until they explicitly release it. Each of these suppliers generates a diversity spend report for their use.
Organizations can then choose to allocate diversity spend to their client companies, either by percentage or by amount per supplier. Tealbook combines this allocated spend information from all contributing suppliers into a consolidated Tier 2 Diversity Spend report.
Tealbook also partnered with its customers to develop and launch an initiative that would lower the cost and burden associated with small and diverse businesses certification. The authenticated self-certification program is designed to help companies demonstrate social responsibility by growing their small and/or diverse suppliers while minimizing the burden on suppliers to go through arduous certification processes.
Tealbook’s self-certification program will make certifications more accessible to small and diverse businesses as well as open new business opportunities among buyers motivated to include them in new bids.
Advertising
Ware2Go/Google
Ware2Go, a fulfillment network and service provider, has partnered with Google Shopping. The integration will dynamically display free, fast delivery promises within merchants’ Google ads, based on real-time inventory availability across Ware2Go’s fulfillment network.
These annotations are designed to help merchants optimize ad efficiency using Google Shopping, and can drive revenue by advertising free, fast shipping offers much earlier in the buyer’s journey, including at the point of initial product research via Google Search.
The integration comes after Ware2Go revealed results of a recent survey indicating that 52 percent of merchants found a fast shipping promise to be the most effective tactic to increase cart conversion. The survey also said that nearly 65 percent of merchants report an increase of up to 25 percent in conversion rates when one-to-two day delivery was offered.
According to initial data from Google Shopping, merchants displaying the free and fast annotation saw a 7 percent increase in conversions, a 10 percent increase in conversions per dollar, and a nine percent overall conversion rate.
Unified commerce
Jesta I.S.
Jesta I.S., an integrated ERP and unified commerce software solutions provider for wholesalers and omnichannel retailers, has rebranded its Vision Omnichannel platform to Vision Unified Omni.
Vision Unified Omni is designed to remove all remaining barriers between physical and digital commerce so today’s empowered shoppers can purchase when, where and how they want, and choose their collection/delivery method.
The platform is cloud-accessible and subscription-based and can intelligently route orders according to enterprise rules and most optimal supply source: a warehouse, store, dropship vendor or third-party logistics provider.
The order orchestration system is designed to deliver 360-degree visibility of global inventory, orders, transactions and customers by communicating with order capture and fulfillment to process all changes pre and post shipment.
Warehouse management
Metapack/Manhattan Associates
Metapack, an e-commerce delivery technology company, has launched its direct External Parcel Integration (EPI) with Manhattan Associates, a supply chain and omnichannel commerce technology. The EPI directly connects Manhattan Associates’ warehouse management system (WMS) and Metapack’s delivery management platform, providing retailers with seamless access to both services.
The EPI connector is aimed at reducing integration time and costs for retailers, by using both Manhattan Associates WMS shipping capabilities and Metapack systems across global warehouse locations. The EPI enables implementation of Metapack Delivery Manager alongside Manhattan’s WMS with the aim of minimal work for the customer. In just two to four weeks, customers are up and running with the connector.
Fit technology
FNX/Alvanon
FNX Technologies is collaborating with Alvanon’s 3D Body Platform to drive change in cloud-based 3D image rendering for digital product development for the global apparel industry.
FNX’s 3D render automation platform enables brands to scale their 3D production pipelines faster than traditional processes, removing the manual effort and delivering digital imagery that can be leveraged throughout the entire product development journey—from prototyping, digital fitting, visualizing store layout and merchandising to direct display on e-commerce sites.
Both technologies are compatible with design programs such as Browzwear and CLO3D.
The new collaboration also gives FNX’s customers access to Alvanon’s vast library of over 6,000 3D virtual AlvaForms, each representing a specific brand’s fit standards.
Merchandise planning
Exenta
Exenta launched the newest release of Exenta Shop Floor Control (SFC), which includes a new user interface, daily target tracking, management dashboards and a seasonal planning tool.
The new UI is designed to be more intuitive, visually pleasing, incorporating colors and graphics that create a better user experience. Accessed via an Android tablet like the previous version, the new UI allows for more graphical representations of data, supporting charts that illustrate percentages, timers, pacing tools and more, further enhancing the user experience.
Other app enhancements include the ability to customize the tablet display, reducing clutter and further contributing to ease of use for operators.
New dashboards within the SFC solution allow users to get a snapshot of their business for that specific date and time, granting organizations an overview of their situation, status and productivity, with multiple KPI’s present within a view.
“Daily Targets” screens show a live feed of units produced and a department line for direct comparison between how many units were made compared to target goals. The new app is designed to make it easier for operators and managers to see and understand progress toward goals.
The seasonal planning tool enables users to plan large orders to be projected and managed further out on the calendar. Seasonal planning empowers manufacturers to strategically plan at the corporate level for the delivery of key, larger volume contracts and will be invaluable to those meeting orders from government entities or larger retail chains. The tool is design to help users schedule future projects based on project capacity at specific factories, and also to capitalize on the strengths of performance from one factory to another.
Digital marketing
Listrak/Shopify Plus
Listrak, a digital marketing cloud technology provider for retailers, announced its membership within the Shopify Plus Certified App program.
This certified integration allows merchants to share and leverage data from both Shopify and Listrak, enabling cross-channel orchestration of email, SMS, behavioral marketing, personalization, identity resolution, and customer analytics solutions—all together in a single platform.
Shopify Plus merchants will have instant access to Listrak’s workflow tool to create multi-stage, non-linear journeys and one-on-one real-time interactions across channels that respond to new customer signals, previous interaction data and machine learning algorithms, resulting in highly personalized experiences.