Do the Holidays Bring Out the Best in Your Apps?

Businesses are bracing for Black Friday shopping. But not just by stocking the shelves. As more consumers are jumping on their tablets and laptops the day after Thanksgiving vs. heading to the mall, businesses are making sure their apps are ready for this “transaction superhighway.”

As the proliferation of online ordering and in-store pickup continues in the 2014 shopping season, standing in lines has become antiquated. This trend has become more widespread as savvy businesses have ensured that the user experience is more streamlined and reliable. This starts with building high productivity apps that function efficiently. There’s no doubt that choosing the right tools to deliver purpose-built applications that are easily consumed - help drive businesses forward especially during the biggest sale cycle of the year.

One example is Macintosh Retail Group (MRG), which has delivered a cross-channel strategy to enable a seamless customer experience using Progress solutions. MRG is transforming its entire ERP system, enabling the company to seamlessly connect the physical stores, online shops and marketplaces with the back office, customer service and warehouse in real time.

Post holiday season we predict that retailers will look at apps in a whole new way and start exploring the crossroads of the Internet of Things and predictive analytics to enable "predictive selling." For example, the connected home will enable certain retailers to break down even more additional road blocks and offer consumers products they may have not realized they needed, such as milk or water filters. With an alert to the consumer’s phone followed by home delivery, the only action needed from the consumer might be to open the alert and press buy. 2015 will be interesting and we are excited to be on the frontier of enabling app dev that’s responding to the disruptive technological times we live in.

What are your predictions for the 2014 holiday shopping season? Let us know at @ProgressSW!