As part of our Smart & Dark strategy we've been focused on enhancing the user experience of our "Smart" products. I was reading Luke Kowalski's blog on the application of Web 2.0 to enterprise software since Luke and the rest of the Oracle UX team have been looking at this for some time. When I looked at his presentation, I noticed on slide 6 that "retail" and "point-of-sale" were the first two examples listed. Nice to know people think about retail.
One of the things that most interests me about user experience is the social networking aspects. That is, features made popular by Facebook, Wikis, and Blogs (to name a few). On slide 10, Luke says (paraphrased):
Is social networking useful to the enterprise?
If the approach is to use myspace in our applications, then no.
If the approach is to generate a community that supports information refinement in line with business goals, then yes.
I completely agree. For social collaboration to make the jump to enterprise software, there must be clear utility to the business. This usually translates to somehow capturing information that is higher quality (presumably because more people have influenced it) and must be usable (easy to find and germane).
In retail, software is already available to help retailers and their vendors collaborate. Now we must consider ways to help buyers, planners, supply chain people, and store managers collaborate on things like assortments, allocations/replenishment, and promotions. Interactions at this level will improve decision making and bring the business closer to the consumers they serve.
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