Estimated reading time: 11 minutes
“There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.”
Have you ever wondered what was new in the industry? How your clients were handling all these new trends? What strategy did they choose? What in the hell does “Ghost Kitchen” mean?
Here is a tool for you!
This is the new reality we are facing in the technology industry. The market has drastically grown in a few months with new terms and concepts. The following glossary is meant to help VARs and IVSs and has been made to provide you with the essential terms, abbreviations, and expressions for the future of technology. This can help you understand the market better and help you go through 2021, winning deals by being on top of your game.
Due to lockdowns, social distancing guidelines, mandates, and many other things, virus-related health protocols have been implemented in workplaces. The market had to adapt quickly to new measures, attendance, and protocols throughout various verticals within the last year.
GLOSSARY:
5G: Next step of “industry 4.0”, the development of the factory of the future. In these futuristic factories, connected devices can sense their environments and connect with each other, allowing them to make faster and decentralized decisions. 5G is supposed to be 25 times faster than today’s 4G networks and lag reduced to zero.
Artificial Intelligence (AI): can be used to detect and account for behavior changes and predict the effects of policies.
Automatic Identification and Data Capture (AIDC): This is a term used to group all technologies that identify, verify, track, record, communicate and store information on discrete, packaged, or containerized items. Such as barcode, RFID, voice recognition, labels, cubing… AIDC monitors complex supply chains, quality control, inventory tracking and thanks to IoT it reduces humans errors.
Blockchain: technology for storing and transmitting information, transparent, secure, and operating without a central control body. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the digital transformation drive in many areas, especially in the use of blockchain.
BOPIS: is Buy Online, Pickup In-Store … This is for companies with both a physical store and an online storefront. When customers visit the website, they can reserve an item and purchase it. Then they go to your store on convenient curbside or pickup in-store. In the case of a big amount of sales, your website enables your client to choose a rate plan and process the sale online before they ever visit the store.
BORIS: is Buy Online, Return In-Store… which enables clients to visit your website and purchase products, to have them delivered to their home/office. If they are not satisfied, they can return products bought online in a physical store. This return could be at any store. This option is used by many sellers now, as a “return-to-store” process is an important piece of the omnichannel puzzle to achieving higher levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Cloud Kitchen: new business model only focusing on the food and its delivery. There is no dining area, so kitchens can open in less attractive (so less expensive) localizations, where visibility, accessibility, and foot traffic are not essential for the customer.
Cloud Computing: is the delivery of on-demand computing services — from applications to storage and processing power — typically over the internet and on a pay-as-you-go basis.
CURBSIDE PICKUP: allows customers to collect physically their order, previously ordered online, from a convenient location. Everything is set up to be contactless and customers don’t even have to step out of their car.
Cybersecurity: refers to technologies, processes, and practices designed to protect networks, devices, programs, and data from attack, damage, or unauthorized access. Cybersecurity is also information technology security. Moreover, with all worker remotely working, we are not safe from cyber-attacks.
Dark stores: are designed to make fulfilling online orders as simple as possible. Some are set up with aisles and shelves, just like a regular store, but without any of the signage or displays, you’d see at your local retailer. At these dark stores, pickers shop the store and collect items to fill online orders. Often, they can fulfill several orders at once.
DTC/D2C – Direct-to-customer: is a type of business-to-consumer (B2C) retail sales strategy where a business will build, market, sell and ship a product directly to the customer. Selling D2C streamlines the distribution process by avoiding any intermediate (such as third-party retailers and channel partners) (ref: https://whatis.techtarget.com)
Edge Computing: is a form of IT architecture serving as an alternative to Cloud Computing. Rather than pushing the data generated by IoT connected devices to the cloud or a data center, it is about processing the data at the edge of the network directly where it is generated.
Extended Reality (XR): is among the key enablers of augmented shopping, which itself is turning into the “new normal” of retail experiences. XR is used as an umbrella term encompassing virtual, augmented and mixed reality solutions. (definition from earlymetrics.com) Smartphones have become better and better at processing augmented reality (AR) content, that XR became a great tool to sell products.
Ghost Kitchen (Food retail): is a new type of food retail, where professional facilities are adapted for the preparation of delivery-only meals. They accommodate space designated for meal preparation, kitchen equipment and supplies. It has no dining area. The new tend comes with the fact that restaurants area are close, so people cut back on restaurant dining in favor of takeout.
Green retailing: This refers to the environmentally-friendly practices that retailers get into. These can include switching a product’s packaging to a recyclable one or giving customers reusable shopping bags instead of plastic. Other practices, such adding solar panels or replacing store lighting with energy-saving alternatives can also be considered as green retailing. (ref: www.vendhq.com)
Hyper-Local Fulfillment: highly distributed network of very small fulfillment centers located close to consumers, uses small fulfillment centers, often automated, delivering in a tight radius and on a short schedule. The concept was a response to growing e-commerce use and reducing brick-and-mortar sales.
IoT (Internet of Things): describes the network of physical objects—“things”—that are embedded with sensors, software, and other technologies for the purpose of connecting and exchanging data with other devices and systems over the Internet.
ISPU: In-Store Pickup … allows a customer to place their order online and collect the order items from any physical store. The Order Management System (OMS) provides a web-based interface to allow the store associate to pick and prepare the items for customer pickup.
Machine learning: is an application of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence provides the system to automatically learn and improve, without being programmed to do so. Machine learning is basically done to make predictions using a computer.
Multi Channel Retail: focuses on the information, it allows each channel to function on its own. Multichannel retail does allow consumers to make purchases through different channels, it’s more important than ever to have integrated channels. With more and more people doing their shopping on multi-devices, it can help retain customers.
Omni Channel Retail: focuses on the customer and making them the center of the business. Businesses bring their employees together and inform them of the changes. This allows them to focus on keeping things consistent between channels as they apply changes to retail. It provides more focus on customers and leads to better sales.
Payment Gateway: is a merchant service provided by an e-commerce application service provider that authorizes credit card or direct payments processing for e-businesses, online retailers, bricks and clicks, or traditional brick and mortar.
PCI Compliance: The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a set of security standards designed to ensure that ALL companies that accept, process, store or transmit credit card information maintain a secure environment. (def: www.pcicomplianceguide.org)
Phishing: is designed to trick victims into divulging sensitive information, such as identity and financial-related data, and the threat can actually take several forms: (def – University of Plymouth)
- Bulk-phishing – where the approach is not specially targeted or tailored toward the recipient;
- Spear-phishing – where the message is targeted at specific individuals or companies and tailored accordingly;
- Clone-phishing – where the scammers take a legitimate email containing an attachment or link, and replace it with a malicious version;
- Whaling – in these cases the phishing is specifically targeted towards high value or senior individuals.
Physical Automation: looks like actually replacing a physical worker with a machine. The robot will complete the physical task in its queue, so that the human worker can focus on more sophisticated duties. Thinking of smart pickers, these machines hold the ability to pick up and move items from the shelf to the loading doc, and vice versa.
Process Automation: typically refers to data and several other important statistics such as KPIs; this method works to collect data on your behalf so you can mine it for insights at a later date. This way, when it comes to customers, you can learn about their tastes and preferences to better prepare orders that come in, in the future.
Quantum Computing: Next remarkable technology trend is quantum computing, which is a form of computing that takes advantage of quantum phenomena like superposition and quantum entanglement. This amazing technology trend is also involved in preventing the spread of the coronavirus, and developing potential vaccines, thanks to its ability to easily query, monitor, analyze and act on data, regardless of the source. Another field where quantum computing is finding applications is banking and finance, to manage credit risk, for high-frequency trading and fraud detection. (def from: https://www.simplilearn.com/)
Queue management solutions (QMS): allow telecom retailers can manage in-store traffic, reduce lost revenue potential through walkouts, and provide an exceptional experience. This solution is a way for customers to join a virtual queue, keeping their place in line without needing to physically wait outside a brick-and-mortar store. (https://www.iqmetrix.com/)
Quick Service Restaurant (QSR): The actual industry term for a fast-food establishment is a “quick-service restaurant,” or QSR. It’s most easily understood by thinking of such dining concepts as McDonald’s, KFC, and Burger King.
Ransomware: is malware that employs encryption to hold a victim’s information at ransom. A user or organization’s critical data is encrypted so that they cannot access files, databases, or applications. A ransom is then demanded to provide access. Ransomware is often designed to spread across a network and target database and file servers, and can thus quickly paralyze an entire organization. (Definition from Macfee https://www.mcafee.com/enterprise/fr-ca/security-awareness/ransomware.html)
Real-time data: in the healthcare industry it can generate a sense of value, protect patients, and efficiently move patients through the system.
Retail Disruption: Disruption is encouraging brands of all sizes to transform and alter the way they work by boldly going where their competitors aren’t. But disruption is also about how you as a retailer can take advantage of things like tech to adapt; being proactive instead of reactive, and creating trends, rather than riding the same old waves as the other retailers in the market. (Maplewave)
RFID: An acronym for Radio Frequency Identification, RFID is a chip embedded in an item’s label or packaging. It stores information about the product and is primarily used for tracking purposes. Thanks to RFID technology, retailers can increase their inventory accuracy and reduce out of stocks. Retailers are now looking into using RFID to get additional customer insights that would allow them to implement more effective marketing strategies and provide better customer experiences.
ROPIS: is Reserve Online, Pickup In-Store … is different from BOPIS (click and collect) in the way that it doesn’t require clients to complete the purchase online. Instead, they reserve a product online and visit the store in order to view it or try it in person before the purchase. ROPIS is a big opportunity for retailers to attract more clients, especially with technical, oversized, or expensive products.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA): Like Ai and Machine Learning, Robotic Process Automation, or RPA, is another technology that is automating jobs. RPA is the use of software to automate business processes such as interpreting applications, processing transactions, dealing with data, and even replying to emails. RPA automates repetitive tasks that people used to do. (ref: www.simplilearn.com)
Telehealth services: The Health Resources Services Administration defines telehealth as the use of electronic information and telecommunications technologies to support long-distance clinical health care, patient and professional health-related education, public health and health administration. (www.healthit.gov)
Upsell Processing: When items are delivered to customers normally, there is no real opportunity to increase sales when it comes to additional offers. It was found that 85% of BOPIS users purchased additional items when arriving at the store to collect their products.
Warehouse 4.0: The industrial revolution, also known as Industry 4.0, has ushered in Warehouse 4.0. It benefits from prior revolutions that have been created so far and acquired all advanced technological strategies such as automation, artificial intelligence, and the capability to capture and process big data.
Wifi 6: Wi-Fi 6 is the next-generation standard in WiFi technology. Wi-Fi 6 also known as “AX WiFi” or “802.11ax WiFi” builds and improves on the current 802.11ac WiFi standard. Wi-Fi 6 was originally built in response to the growing number of devices in the world. If you own a VR device, multiple smart home devices, or simply have a large number of devices in your household, then a Wi-Fi 6 router might just be the best WiFi router for you.
We will keep this glossary updated, as soon as we find new and trend terms applicable to our technology industry.
We hope this glossary would have helped you better understand our market.
