Raymark’s Paris office has been conducting its Raymark Cafés, a gathering of Raymark employees, retailers and partners, for the past several years. The goal of these meetings, much like the aim of this blog, is to exchange ideas, concepts and visions around the present and future state of retail.

Roland Bermann, a well-respected Market Analyst, reflected on the importance of these gatherings and believes their value is directly tied to the principle that “knowledge generates profit” and that Raymark Cafés help:

• Transform information into knowledge
• Transform knowledge into action
• Transform action into sales and profit

Areas of discussion range from partnerships and new system functionality to issues, problems, product evolution and projects, with the most recent Raymark Cafés focusing on:

• CRM (mass and targeted)
• RFID (from the supply chain to the store)
• Multichannel
• Business Intelligence
• Epayment
• Distribution Channels
• Application Service Providers

May’s gathering took place at Le Palais Brongniart, a prestigious conference center originally built by order of Napoleon Bonaparte to offer a permanent home to the Paris stock exchange. The discussion centered around epayment, and those in attendance profited from discovering new solutions, reinforcing their current choices, and receiving concrete answers to their questions. The presentations, demos and shared experiences led to several conclusions regarding the growing importance of rapid, reliable and multichannel epayment, as well as the risk of fraud involved. Whereby wait times were uncovered as the primary epayment concern from a consumer perspective, retailers must weigh several factors before deciding on an epayment solution. Those mentioned included:

• Can it handle a multichannel operation?
• Does it accept multiple payment methods (bank cards, PAYPAL etc.)
• Does it operate independently from banks and other financial institutions?
• How can costs associated with acquiring and using dedicated servers be reduced?
• How can service continuity be ensured in the event of a power failure?
• How can security be guaranteed...

...and so much more!

Le Palais Brongniart

Thank you to all those who participated in this enlightening discussion; it is always interesting to hear what our European customers have to say and we look forward to seeing what the next Raymark Café will bring!