Retail webinar for September

The monthly Retail webinar for September was held on the 5th of September and showcased various features, some of which are releasing soon and others that are in the early stage of design.

 We started the demos with an update to the “Preferred payment methods” feature which allows retailers to define eligible payment methods for returns. The preferred payment methods functionality addresses key refunds and returns scenarios for retailers, reducing risk and increasing profitability margins.

 We then moved over to improvements we’ve made to statement posting, starting with the validation checker that was recently released. The retail store validation checker enables retailers to validate transaction information from all channels before statement posting, thereby catching errors in advance. With the new changes, users have a visual user interface to manage the rules and validations before running the validation checks on the statement to be posted. Another enhancement we’ve made to statement posting is the capability for retail admins to make transaction-level corrections before posting statements without the need for support intervention. The feature includes audit trails to ensure that corrections are tracked. It can be used in cases of transaction corrections to avoid statement posting issues.

 We then showcased the feature currently in preview for end of day processing for trickle feed order creation. The feature enables users to create orders from retail transaction tables in much higher frequency than possible in recent versions of Retail. With this feature, the order creation process is a continuous activity throughout the day, based on entries into the retail transaction table, leaving only financial reconciliation for the end of day tasks.

Towards the end of the session we shared our new concept of intelligent product recommendations, which uses machine-learning, cart, and user context to provide intelligent and relevant product recommendation to customers and cashiers. The intelligent product recommendations functionality uses the omni-channel business KPI-driven metrics with user inputs, and provide opportunities for better revenue boosting and customer engagement experiences.

We posted a recording and the presentation materials from this last webinar, as well as information about the upcoming webinar, on the Retail Interest Group Yammer group. This Yammer group is quite active—used by implementation partners, support, customers, and product group members to post questions and comments—allowing members to take advantage of the collective knowledge of the Retail community. To join this group, go to the Yammer site to send a request – http://aka.ms/retailinterestgroup.

The next webinar will be on the October 3rd. We’re looking forward to seeing you all there!