Posted by Meghdutt Brahmachari, Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise

If there’s one thing we discovered from our retail Hangout On Air series, it’s that there’s no shortage of innovative new ideas percolating in the retail industry. Retailers are using Google to improve how employees collaborate on projects, speed up customer searches for products, and uncover insights on consumer behavior. Here’s what our interviewees shared with us over the past month:

Improve customer experience and engagement

• Speedway Motors, the world's largest manufacturer of hot-rodding and racing products, relies on Google Search Appliance to help shoppers quickly find parts and accessories. By improving their customer experience, Speedway increased conversions by 45% and search revenue by 116%.

Create a stronger digital presence

• Ocado is using Google App Engine and Google Maps to build a stronger digital presence, including development of a customer-friendly “Where’s My Order?” feature, which uses maps to display the exact location of an order.

Innovate and be more productive

• Ocado is innovating with Google App Engine to let employees build customized dashboards for monitoring business information unique to their jobs.
• Ahold, the global grocery retailer, cut costs by 75% and improved employee productivity by switching to Google Apps – plus, they benefited from a no-headaches implementation.

Use data to drive strategy

• Big Data can help retailers decide on strategic direction: Interactions Marketing and Tableau Software used Google BigQuery to analyze massive data sets and uncover “unexpected insights,” such as predicting how many products will be sold at an event based on variables like the weather.

If you missed any of these Hangouts, good news – you can watch the recorded versions below and discover new ways to build retail businesses that rely on new and collaborative technologies.

How Ocado Innovates with Google

How Speedway Motors revved up its site search with Google Search Appliance

How Google helps retailers turn Big Data into big insights

Learnings from a CIO

Posted by Meghdutt Brahmachari, Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise


Change is never easy, but when a business has tens of thousands of employees in locations around the world, bringing in new technology can be very disruptive. In this week’s Hangout On Air for retailers, Christine Atkins, former CIO of global grocery retailer Ahold, explains why moving to the cloud offers the best chance to adopt faster, flexible business solutions without implementation headaches.

Come to the Hangout On Air this Thursday, October 3, at 10 a.m. PT, to hear Atkins talk about her experience guiding Ahold to go Google. Ahold switched from an aging and inflexible legacy system for email and collaboration to Google Apps. As Atkins, now a principal at Atkins & Cameron Consulting LLC, explains, the shift to Google Apps and the cloud led to a 75% decrease in costs, plus a no-hitches implementation and higher productivity. Atkins and Bill Hippenmeyer, director of Google Apps for Business Strategy, will talk about these retail challenges:

• What tools does a distributed workforce need to be successful?
• How do you choose technology that meets the expectations of millennials?
• How do you manage the culture changes that come with technology innovation?

If you missed our previous Hangout On Air with Interactions Marketing and Tableau Software on mining insights from Big Data, you can view it here.

RSVP for the Christine Atkins Hangout On Air, and take part in the Q&A by posting your questions on Google+ or Twitter using the hashtag #GoneGoogle.

Posted by Meghdutt Brahmachari, Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise

When it’s raining out, do people’s shopping habits change? Those are the kind of questions the team at Interactions Marketing, working with Tableau Software, think about when analyzing massive data sets on behalf of retailers. In a highly competitive market, retailers need the edge they can gain from business data – and with the analysis they can generate using Google BigQuery. By analyzing these data sets, you can find what Interactions Marketing calls “unexpected insights,” which help businesses make predictions that can improve sales. For example, they look at how external factors like the weather will affect retail sales.

Find out more about the value of Big Data and unexpected insights for retailers – and how Google BigQuery supports these analytics projects – in our Hangout On Air on Thursday, September 26, at 9 a.m. PT. Giovanni DeMeo, Vice President of Global Marketing and Analytics for Interactions Marketing; Paul Lilford, Global Director for Technology Partners at Tableau Software; and Daniel Powers, Director of Sales for Google Cloud Platform will explain how retailers can understand their businesses better and boost success:

• How can unexpected insights help retailers attract and keep customers?
• What are the pressures on retailers to glean insights from their data?
• How does cloud storage make Big Data analysis possible?
• How can you make it easier to visualize and understand your data?

If you missed our previous Hangout On Air with Speedway Motors, the world’s largest manufacturer of specialty hot-rodding and racing products, you can catch up on the recording here.

RSVP for the Interactions Marketing/Tableau Software Hangout On Air, and participate in the Q&A by posting your questions on Google+ or Twitter using the hashtag #GoneGoogle.