Guess CIO On iPad Trial: “This Is The Consumerization Of IT.”
Written by Evan SchumanJanuary 11th, 2012
Walk into one of about 25 Guess stores this week and you'll see customer-accessible iPads in the men's, women's and accessories departments and even in the dressing rooms. "For the cost of a kiosk, I can put in four or five of these," said Guess CIO Michael Relich. "This is the consumerization of IT."
But the Guess iPad trial is hardly being done to save costs. The flexibility of the tablets and sharp, customer-friendly graphics make the devices a much more effective way to show demos and to locate merchandise, check inventory and do anything else that a kiosk would normally do.
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One Comment | Read Guess CIO On iPad Trial: “This Is The Consumerization Of IT.”
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-Christine
January 30th, 2012 at 3:43 pm
Because Apple provides little support at the enterprise level, it is interesting to watch the struggles as retailers implement.
In Mike’s case, he talks at great length about the augmentation of the customer experience. The biggest hole we see retailers struggle with here is basic wireless coverage. The experience goes bad quickly if, while your walking around, you get into the middle of a function and can’t recover. This is even worse when it is being used for Mobile POS, which Mike indicates is still in the future for Guess. For the experience to be pure, the coverage has to be seamless, much stronger than the store is used to providing. As a result, we see a surge in a few areas . Wireless site survey’s and new infrastructure deployments … areas of cost often overlooked. Additionally, we’ve seen the desire to have an enterprise level app allowing the measurement and gauging of signal strength as the devices are moving around.
Additionally, the discussion of tie into the Walkie Talkie system is also an emerging need. I anticipate the ability to see Apple devices tie into or even act as Walkie Talkie devices within the next year.