Analysis: Mobile technology gives shoppers the advantage

Not so long ago businesses were resolutely against allowing staff to use their own mobiles at work. It was a security risk, the argument went, it was difficult to manage, and it created more work for the IT team.

But that was before mobile technology took off so quickly that it was impossible to ignore. Almost before retailers knew what was happening, customers were using their phones to shop both in-store and outside, and mobiles started to infiltrate retail processes.

Retailers have responded to the shift with varying degrees of success, but one thing is clear: the speed of change in consumer technology is not easy for businesses to keep pace with.

As Tesco chief information officer Mike McNamara said at the NRF conference in New York in January: “Our consumers are becoming connected, and the enterprise needs to embrace these technologies internally.”

But as new mobile handsets are released almost every month, as well as new tablet launches generating headlines on a frequent basis, equipping store staff with the most up-to-date hardware is next to impossible - especially for bigger retailers. So will there be a role in future for a staff member’s own mobile in retail operations?

Tesco seems to think so. The grocer is rolling out an internal social network and collaboration platform at the moment, designed to make it easier for staff across the business to share ideas. The platform will be accessible on mobile phones - a necessity when so many of Tesco’s staff are not desk-bound - but with thousands of workers across the globe, equipping every member of staff with a work mobile isn’t practical.

The platform, which will use Microsoft’s Office 365 software, will be hosted in the cloud, which McNamara described as “hugely helpful”, and which makes it easier for the system to be accessed from a variety of devices and locations.

He added that many staff will access the system on their own devices: “A lot of it will be ‘bring your own’, which is what we see happening anyway. Many retailers are thinking about ‘bringing your own device’ scenarios.

“We had a road to Damascus moment a couple of years ago as Facebook took off in earnest. We were resisting it, saying it doesn’t matter to us - but then we changed.”

He added that retailers increasingly need to accept they are not in control of what customers and even employees say, and to embrace that rather than trying to control what’s said. “It was fairly evident to everybody that we couldn’t control communication any longer, so we decided we weren’t going to,” he acknowledged.

A logical move

McNamara said the security element, while obviously a central concern, is easily manageable, and that a technology giant such as Microsoft is probably just as well placed as Tesco is to keep information safe.

A Tesco spokeswoman wouldn’t be drawn on the issue of allowing employees to use their own devices at work, but she did highlight the work the grocer is doing to make it easier for staff to use mobile technology on the shopfloor.

She said: “We’re always looking to see how our customers are changing, what they are looking for next and how we can improve their shopping trip with new digital innovation. We do the same for our colleagues, spending a lot of time looking at technologies that can help make their job easier.”

The retailer has launched a number of apps designed specifically for store staff. She said: “A recent example was the introduction of mobile apps in store, which enable our colleagues to use their phone cameras to scan products and find out further information - such as stock levels - which means they can be even more helpful to customers. We’ll be launching more mobile apps like this for colleagues in the future.”

The fashion for allowing staff to use their mobiles for work purposes hasn’t gone unnoticed by other large retailers.

Marks & Spencer chief information officer Darrell Stein said on Twitter that the issue was one of the key trends to come out of the NRF conference this year, and the retail bellwether now has a strategy on how to approach it.

Forrester analyst Martin Gill says awareness of the trend is growing among retailers, but that so far it has been largely limited to staff in head office and in support functions. Shifting this to store staff as well does make sense, however, and reflects the changing use of technology by workers across the business.

“It’s a logical move,” he says. “The behaviour you see from customers is that they are increasingly using mobile in-store, and store associates are essentially the same as shoppers - they are displaying exactly the same behaviour.”

Relaxing the policy on use of mobile devices at work will enable retail staff to adapt more easily as shopping habits change - and although the idea of staff using their own technology at work is not particularly new, it’s the ramifications on the shopfloor that make it potentially beneficial for retailers.

“Customers are often more sophisticated than most of the retailers they interact with,” says Gill. “Retailers are struggling to keep up, and anything that helps them increase the pace of change is a good thing. I can’t see a
way for a big retailer to enable that dynamic mobile behaviour unless they let [staff] use their own devices.”

Need for guidelines

Gill believes the security aspects are “entirely solvable”, although Brian Hume, managing director of IT consultancy Martec International, adds there are “nagging doubts” about the security issue among some retailers.

He says: “If you’ve got to interfere with somebody’s personal smartphone there might be an issue there.” But he acknowledges: “It’s going to happen anyway. Security will gradually get to be less of an issue because retailers are used to providing that kind of security for a transactional website.”

If central business applications are accessed via the web, there’s no reason why they can’t be accessed on a smartphone - the same level of security will apply.

Gill advises that retailers will need to put rules in place: “Spending the whole day on Facebook is a concern, so retailers will need to bring in guidelines for acceptable behaviour.”

Whether retailers choose to act on the issue or not, it is likely staff will bring their own mobiles in anyway. Whether they’re using them to help sell something, find where a product is in stock, or share ideas, there are plenty of benefits for the retailer - coming up with a strategy to solve potential problems and tap into these benefits can only be worthwhile.