Trending December 2023 # How Retailers Can Deploy A Connected Associate Program At Scale # Suggested January 2024 # Top 17 Popular

With the right apps and integrations, retail employees can use their phones as a human resources (HR) hub where they can check their schedules, request days off, trade shifts and clock in/out. They can check inventory, scan product barcodes and process contactless transactions from the sales floor. Perhaps most importantly, they can communicate with co-workers across a variety of channels.

Retailers can build their own associate apps or use off-the-shelf software that integrates with existing systems, including apps for:

Samsung has built retail-friendly capabilities into rugged versions of Galaxy smartphones and tablets, including the new Galaxy XCover6 Pro and Galaxy Tab Active4 Pro. This includes programmable buttons with push-to-talk (PTT) functionality for a walkie-talkie experience, as well as Knox Capture camera-based barcode scanning.

Questions to consider:

Sharing devices comes with a lower upfront investment, but it also means employees need to spend the first few minutes of each shift tracking down a device and hoping it has enough battery life left for the remainder of their shift. When each employee is assigned their own device, they can individually ensure their device is ready to go when they start work.

Some retailers are even adopting a Company-Owned/Personally Enabled (COPE) model, letting employees use their work devices as personal smartphones. Devices protected by built-in Samsung Knox can effectively separate work apps from personal data, creating both a Work and a Personal space on the device. When associates are on the clock, they can log into their work profile to access work apps and data. When they’re off the clock, they can log into their personal profile to access personal apps and data.

Questions to consider:

A well-designed CA program can improve associate productivity, employee engagement and the customer experience — all of which boosts the bottom line. It’s a smart investment, and one that needs to be protected.

Samsung offers mobile devices that look and function like consumer-grade devices but have been semi-ruggedized for work environments. For example, both Galaxy XCover6 Pro and Galaxy Tab Active4 Pro have received MIL-STD-810H certification, meaning they can withstand constant vibration, extreme temperatures and up to 4-foot drops without a case (5-foot drops with case). They’re also IP68 certified, meaning they’re dust-proof and water-resistant.

Retailers also need policies and technology, such as Samsung Knox Guard, that help protect devices in the case they’re lost or stolen.

Questions to consider:

Configuring, deploying, managing and updating hundreds or thousands of devices across multiple locations is a big undertaking, but retailers don’t have to go it alone.

Transform retail associate performance

Get your free guide to empowering retail associates with mobile devices and data. Download Now

Samsung is experienced at creating custom, scalable solutions for retailers. That includes helping retail partners define and refine their strategy, test options and implement management best practices at scale. Samsung works closely with customers’ IT departments to optimize deployments using Knox Suite, a collection of device management solutions that streamline the process. For example, Knox Mobile Enrollment lets enterprises bulk enroll a large fleet of devices — over Wi-Fi or LTE — so IT doesn’t need to touch every device, and associates don’t need to do anything to get their new devices up and running. Knox Suite tools also let retailers create a customized user experience for associates, push that setup to the whole fleet and remotely manage and secure all those devices at scale.

Once devices are deployed, Knox Asset Intelligence (KAI) helps retailers ensure they’re getting the most out of their investment. It analyzes mobile device usage to identify challenges with any or all of the devices — such as nonresponsive or sluggish apps, Wi-Fi connectivity fluctuations and battery health — and provides insights into how to solve problems. For example, if a device’s battery is draining too quickly, KAI can identify whether devices are being recharged properly or whether specific device settings or apps are draining the battery.

Samsung also maintains a strong partner ecosystem, with off-the-shelf software solutions and a full suite of accessories tailor-made for Galaxy devices. Samsung offers device setup, repair services and 24/7 tech support. This way, associates get the tools they need to work more efficiently and effectively — without overtaxing IT or putting device/data security at risk.

Questions to consider:

Samsung’s smart retail solutions help you reconnect associates and consumers, your way. Discover more about how you can empower retail associates with mobile devices and data in this free guide.

You're reading How Retailers Can Deploy A Connected Associate Program At Scale

Advantage Goes To Retailers Who Connect With The Connected Consumer

As consumer connectivity becomes more pervasive and complex, innovative retailers have a great opportunity to widen their lead on their less tech-savvy competitors.

Whatever you sell, your customers are embracing ubiquitous networking. They are surrounding themselves with smart assistants, wearable technology and connected devices like the Samsung Family Hub refrigerator that enable them to use the internet without handling a dedicated computing device. There is uncertainty about which technologies will prevail, but there is no doubt that communication modes will continue to evolve year over year, particularly as 5G networking emerges.

Amidst so much change, it is beneficial to embrace first principles thinking, recently popularized by Elon Musk. This involves analyzing our challenges and opportunities with a clean slate, free from pre-existing ideas. If you were building a retail operation from the ground up today, how would you structure the customer experience? You might take some of the following approaches.

The customer experience no longer begins in the store. Before your floor associate speaks with a customer, that person has likely already been on your website and may have purchase history that you’re capturing in a database and surfacing for your digital marketing team. But customer data can’t live in these silos forever. There’s an enormous amount of power in providing store associates with useful data about the customer’s historical (and even same-day) interactions with your brand.

Consider creating a 1:1 program for your stores where every associate gets a mobile device. Suddenly, every associate has rich data and powerful search capabilities in the palm of their hand, and a brand new hire can deliver answers with confidence as though they had worked in the store for years. Moreover, employees of all experience levels will have more targeted information to better lead the customer down the path to purchase without forcing them back to the beginning of their journey.

The typical brick-and-mortar checkout experience was designed around cash transactions and did not really evolve when credit and debit cards became common. If you were building a retail experience from the ground up today, you wouldn’t design the entire process around a cash drawer and a queue.

Transform Retail Associate Performance

White Paper

Get your free guide to empowering retail associates with mobile devices and data. Download Now

A 1:1 device program gives you the opportunity to minimize the number of cash lanes needed while empowering floor associates not only to serve customers, but to take payments. This saves you money on cash lane scanners and computers while also giving the customer a more personalized experience, as the associate who helps them is also likely to complete their transaction.

The promise of IoT is yet to be fully realized, but thinking about how your marketing and sales strategy will take it into account as it evolves will ready your business for the years ahead.

Mobility is the path forward in industries as varied as healthcare, transportation and public safety, and retail is no exception. At Samsung, we know retail, and we excel at innovation. In fact, we hold more U.S. patents than any other company. Please stop by Booth 2337 at NRF and find out how our technology and innovative strategies can transform your stores and create experiences that keep customers coming back for more.

Samsung retail solutions are reimagining how associates and consumers connect across channels. Get a look at some of the innovations leading the charge.

Brands Vs. Retailers – How Is The Attractiveness Of A Market Reflected In Search?

When you work within the search intelligence sector and conduct daily industry analyses, you can’t help but to spot patterns. For me, one of those interesting observations is how retailers, rather than brands, predominantly occupy the top SERPs. Considering the nature of e-commerce and the required elements for successful SEO, that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. What does come as a surprise is discovering a European market that is an exception to the general rule – where brands are more dominant than retailers. Where is that market? Italy.

The initial goal of digging into the designer sunglasses category in European markets was to outline the top-performing players and try to determine their search strategies. Based on my previous experience, observing industries/categories related to tangible goods such as jewelry, clothing, and so on, I expected to see a number of retailers filling up the “top” space. That is where I was surprised. It turns out Oakley, Gucci, Armani, Ray-Ban, Persol, and Carerra were all among the top performing search players in Italy’s designer sunglasses category. Moreover, note that four out of those six brands owe their rankings solely to organic search. So, how did they pull that off?

To compare, take a look at the chart with top 10 ranking domains within the same industry and category for the German market. How many brands can you count? Additionally, can you spot any of them that didn’t invest in Adwords?

Is this an exception to the rule, or a clue that could potentially lead us to make some important observations regarding a major European market? Maybe even change our own strategies? Let’s dig further.

While trying to figure how brands are taking over the top spots in search for Italy’s designer sunglasses category, I outlined the following questions:

The fact that Gucci, Armani, and Persol started in Italy and Carrera’s current headquarters is located there definitely has an impact on the brands’ reputation among local customers. It opens space for building trust and loyalty. But is brand origin really a factor when it comes to good search rankings? As you can see above, the brand with the highest position – Oakley – is actually American. So is Ray-Ban, which also ranks among the top 10.

After all, Italy is the capital of fashion. So, naturally a solid amount of the most successful brands in clothing, accessories, jewelry, etc. were initially established in that country.

Obviously, brand origin wasn’t the answer to my overall investigation.

Gianpietro Mazzoleni and Sergio Splendore’s paper “Italian digital Media: transformation without change” from 2013, states:

“ Internet take-up at home is plagued by the slow growth of broadband, which lags behind most of the EU countries, and by access divides, particularly between regions in the north and south and between rural and urban areas. Nonetheless, the percentage of regular internet users now [2012] represents more than half of the population. Almost 90 percent of regular users are aged 14-29.”

In my attempt to evaluate the Italian online market’s maturity in more detail, I drew a comparison between Italy and Germany and analyzed major factors like connectivity, broadband adoption, cost of Google Adwords per inhabitant, and keyword analysis.

 Connectivity

Based on statistics by the European Commission, we can spot a substantial growth between 2012 and 2013, however, compared to Germany’s impressive 85 percent of all households having access to the Internet, the Italians still have a lot of room for improvement.

The difference between Germans and Italians, who have never used the Internet is also fairly significant:

 Speed

Another important factor when evaluating an online market’s maturity is the average speed of connection. As reported in Akamai State of the Internet report, we can see quite a substantial difference between Italy and Germany. The average connection speed in Italy is 4.9 Mbps, compared to Germany – 7.6 Mbps.

Retailers and the Italian online market

As outlined in the Cross-Border E-commerce Country Report – Italy, conducted by Ecommerce Europe, there were about 13 million online shoppers in 2012 and a 15 percent e-commerce penetration. To compare, 51.6 million German internet users have purchased goods and/or services online, resulting in a total of 77 percent e-commerce penetration. Italian online retail sales are expected to mark a significant growth for the upcoming three years, however, Germany’s estimated income is still predicted to be six times higher.

As for the major e-commerce categories in Italy for sectors like fashion health and beauty, customers haven’t really got used to shopping online yet:

Using the set of top 25 generic keywords that we track for a given industry and category, I compared the average level of keyword competition between Italy and Germany (scored from 0 to 1, where 1=HIGH and 0.1=LOW). Additionally, using the Google Keyword Planner tool, I got the estimated cost for the same set of keywords and once again, compared the average results between the two markets. As it turns out, both the cost and the competition is lower in Italy.

The Italian online market makes an exception to the general rule, by letting brands outnumber retailers in top positions of the SERPs.

Comparing the Italian online market’s maturity with the German one, we can definitely spot some major differences, related to broadband speed and distribution, attractiveness for retailers, e-commerce trends, keyword competitiveness, and cost of Adwords.

Nonetheless, the Italian online market shows steady growth in maturity, pointing that it might simply be a matter of time, before retailers “take over” brands in search.

In time, it would be interesting to follow-up, if brands will need to optimize their search strategies, in order to “keep in shape” and be among the top-players.

Last, but definitely not least, analyzing an online’s market maturity can help marketers understand better why some markets are more attractive to retailers than others. Moreover, equipped with this kind of intelligence, they could optimize their own brand’s search campaigns, based on the level of competitiveness and attractiveness of the market.

Featured Image credit: chúng tôi screenshot Feb 2014

How To Rotate, Scale, And Flip Text In Photoshop (Best Methods)

The Best Ways To Rotate, Scale, and Flip Text In Photoshop

There are a ton of fantastic text effects you can create in Photoshop. The problem is, what’s the point if you don’t know how to position the text as you want? Text is one of the easiest things to manipulate in Photoshop. Using a variety of methods discussed here, you can quickly orient your text to suit any image perfectly. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to rotate, scale, and flip text so you can confidently achieve the exact look you want. Let’s get started!

There are two simple ways you can rotate text in Photoshop, depending on the angle you want to set it. Let’s go over each of these options and the unique purpose they serve when rotating text.

Hover nearby any corner of your text until you see a double-sided U shaped arrow.

If you have a specific angle you’d like to set the text to, you can type it in your settings bar. Just type the angle you want and press enter.

Now that you know how to rotate text in Photoshop let’s discuss individual letters. Rather than adjusting the angle of an entire piece of text, you can also select individual letters. By rotating individual letters, you can further customize the look of your text!

With the letter selected, press Command + T (Mac) or Control + T (PC) to transform the individual letter.

Press Enter to commit to the changes.

You can repeat this process as many times as you wish to continue rotating individual letters!

No matter how many times you try to rotate text in Photoshop, the letters won’t write vertically. Rather than individually rotating every letter, there’s an easy workaround to create vertical text in Photoshop.

With your text selected and your Text Tool active, look for the Toggle Text Orientation button in your settings bar. It’s located directly beside the font options.

Scaling text in Photoshop is very straightforward, and there are a few different ways to do it. Here are the best methods you should use when scaling text in Photoshop.

The fastest way to scale text is with the Free Transform Tool. Just grab your Move Tool by pressing V and drag out on any corner of the transform box.

As you scale the text, the font size will automatically increase accordingly.

Scaling text with the character panel in Photoshop is extremely useful because you don’t need to highlight the text. All you need to do is select the text layer in the Layers Panel to start editing!

The most basic way of scaling text in Photoshop is with the Text Tool setting bar.

With your Text Tool and text layer selected, highlight all the text you want to change the size of.

To select all the text at once, use the shortcut Command + A (Mac) or Control + A (PC).

You can also type in a specific font size or select one from the dropdown menu.

It’s worth remembering that your text must be highlighted for this to work. If the text is not highlighted, any adjustments made with this method will have to affect.

The best way to scale a single letter in Photoshop is by using the Text Tool Settings bar.

Simply highlight the letter you want to change the size of and adjust the font size accordingly.

This will only alter the size of the highlighted letter while leaving the rest of the text untouched!

No matter how many times you try to rotate text in Photoshop, the letters will still have the same orientation. Luckily you can flip text in Photoshop in a few easy steps.

To flip text vertically, select the text layer you want to edit.

Grab the Move Tool by pressing V and press Command + T (Mac) or Control + T (PC) to access the Transform Tool.

Select the text layer you want to flip horizontally.

Grab the Move Tool by pressing V and press Command + T (Mac) or Control + T (PC) to access the Transform Tool.

This option will take the left side of your text and put it on the right and vice versa.

Just as we talked about before, to flip an individual letter, you need to convert your text into a shape.

Selecting either of these options will flip the individual letter while leaving the rest of your text untouched. This is another quick way to add some extra pizazz to your text in Photoshop!

Learning how to manipulate text in Photoshop is key to achieve the exact positioning and effects you’re going for. Now that you know how to rotate, scale, and flip text in Photoshop, your options are limitless to how you orient your text.

Want more tutorials like this one? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for more photography, and photo editing tips delivered straight to your inbox!

– Brendan 🙂

How To Request A Refund For Your Apple Developer Program Fees

The Apple Developer Program allows individuals and businesses to create innovative apps for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS. Previously, users paid a fee to join, but after WWDC23, Apple made Beta versions free for all users with compatible devices.

So, whether you want a refund for your membership fees or believe the program isn’t right for you, this article provides a step-by-step guide to help you request a refund for Apple Developer Program fees.

What is the Apple Developer Program?

The Apple Developer Program is a toolkit that helps people worldwide create and improve apps for Apple devices. Even if you don’t know how to code, you can still be a valuable part of the program as a tester.

When you join the program, you get access to the newest software versions of Apple before their public release! As a tester, you can try those features and let Apple know if you find any problems. Your feedback is important because it helps Apple improve before the official stable release.

Besides, Apple holds a special annual event called the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). Developers from all over the world are invited to join and contribute to developing new software. It’s an exciting opportunity to be a part of the latest creations from Apple.

The Apple Developer Program currently offers two membership options. To join these programs, you need to pay an annual fee, which is as follows.

Apple Developer Program: $99

Apple Developer Enterprise Program: $299

However, there is also a way to access the Apple Developer Program without paying any fees. Apple generously provides free access to certain government entities, educational institutions, and NGOs. Additionally, Apple recently decided to waive the fees required for downloading beta software.

How to get a refund for your Apple Developer Program fees

Navigate to the Contact Us page.

You will now receive a Case ID, and a member of Apple Support will contact you within 2-3 business days to provide a final decision on your refund request.

When I spoke with Apple Support, I specifically mentioned requesting a refund for my Apple Developer Program membership.

I explained that I only needed it for beta testing operating systems, especially since it’s now free with Apple ID Sign-in. The support team escalated my case, and my refund was processed by the end of the day.

Tips for requesting a refund of Developer Account fees

Here are some tips I’d suggest if you plan to request a refund for your Apple Developer Account.

Be clear and briefly explain the reasons behind your refund request.

Express your politeness and respect towards the Apple Support representative.

Remember to include any pertinent documents, such as your receipt for the Apple Developer Program.

Ensure you request a refund within 90 days of purchasing your Apple Developer Account.

If you request a refund because you could not publish an app, include information about the app and why it was rejected.

Be patient and understanding. It may take some time for Apple to process your refund request.

Read more:

Author Profile

Bhaskar

Bhaskar is a member of the iGB family and enjoys experimenting with words and rhythms. He also has a knack for web and app development. If not writing, you may find him on strings or engaging in sports. And by evening, his quotes will be appearing on your Instagram feeds.

Golang Program To Check If A String Contains A Substring

A substring is a small string in a string and string in Golang is a collection of characters. Since strings in Go are immutable, they cannot be modified after they have been produced. Concatenating or adding to an existing string, however, enables the creation of new strings. A built-in type in Go, the string type can be used in a variety of ways much like any other data type.

To determine whether a string contains a particular substring, use the Contains(s, substr string) bool function. If the substring is found in the supplied string, a boolean value indicating its presence is returned.

The int function index(s, str string) is used to determine the index of the first instance of a specified substring within a given string. It returns either -1 if the substring is missing or the index of the substring within the string.

The int function index(s, str string) is used to determine the index of the first instance of a specified substring within a given string. It returns either -1 if the substring is missing or the index of the substring within the string.

Step 1 − Create a package main and declare fmt(format package) and strings package

Step 2 − Create a function main and in that function create a string mystr

Step  3 − Using the string function, check whether the string contains the substring or not

Step 4 − Print the output

In this example we will see how to check if a string contains a substring using a built-in function strings.Contains(). The output will be a Boolean value printed on the console. Let’s see through the code and algorithm to get the concept easily.

In this example, we will see how to check if a string contains a substring or not using strings.Index() function.

In this example we will see how to find if a string contains a substring using for loop in strings.Index() function −

We executed the program of checking if a string contains a substring or not using three examples. In the first example we used strings.Contains() function, in the second example we used strings.Index() function and in the third example we used for loop with the former built-in function.

Update the detailed information about How Retailers Can Deploy A Connected Associate Program At Scale on the Bellydancehcm.com website. We hope the article's content will meet your needs, and we will regularly update the information to provide you with the fastest and most accurate information. Have a great day!