“That means logistical and fulfillment challenges,” says Angie Brown, senior vice president of technology.

These challenges are evolving as consumer shopping patterns change, Brown says. Currently, Home Depot is experiencing a “minor shift” from buying online, pick up in store, to buying online and shipping to home.

Angie Brown, senior vice president of technology, Home Depot

“But that’s a positive,” Brown says. “As we’ve invested in the supply chain and gotten things out faster, we see this minor shift as an advantage. It’s a testament to the faster you can get things to customers, the more they’re going to take advantage of [ship to home].”

Consumers want convenience, and they don’t want to wait long. According to Digital Commerce 360 and Bizrate Insights omnichannel survey of 1,069 online shoppers in February 2023, half of survey respondents (48%) said they used BOPIS or curbside pickup to save time or for convenience (47%). 34% ordered to pick up in store to avoid waiting for home delivery, and 32% wanted the product the same day.

Home Depot ranks No. 4 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s database of the largest North American online retailers by web sales.

Building a supply chain to manage inventory

Home Depot relies on a network of approximately 150 supply chain facilities/vendors to meet demand. The merchant also fulfills online orders from its 2,300 store locations in North America.

According to Home Depot’s fourth quarter 2022 earnings call on Feb. 23, the merchant fulfilled 45% of its online orders in store. That’s down from 50% the prior quarter.

“What is driving that?” asks JC Jammal, vice president, online and marketing technology. He says Home Depot’s continued investment in the supply chain network has driven down the time it takes to ship orders to customers’ homes.

“You may have not wanted to wait three days for something. We can get it to you tomorrow — you might be willing to wait one day,” Jammal says. “More customers are opting in to that option if they don’t have another need to go into the store.”

Home Depot manages this network with its home-grown predictive modeling software.

“This allows our replenishment teams to direct the product to the areas with the most demand,” Brown says. As the artificial intelligence machine learning software learns, its predictive capabilities improve.

Stocking products closer to customers costs the merchant less for last-mile delivery, Jammal adds.

JC Jammal, vice president, online and marketing technology, Home Depot

Using mobile to connect in store and online

Another way shoppers’ behavior is changing is how they shop. Brown says more Home Depot shoppers are choosing to shop online using their mobile devices to visit HomeDepot.com or via the Home Depot mobile app.

The app allows shoppers to get more product information without the help of a store associate when shopping in person.

“Now, I can scan that product and get that additional information,” Jammal says.

The ability to scan products is “one of the key features that is driving increased app engagement,” he says, without revealing more.

“We continue to build more parity between what’s in our app and what’s on our website,” Jammal says. Home Depot has been building “web views” in the mobile app. Web views mirrors the web browser experience within Home Depot’s mobile app, he says.

“Everything you can do on the website, you can now do on the app,” Jammal says.

Over the last year, Jammal says app downloads are on the rise, including “better engagement,” he says. Jammal declined to reveal details but says “a lot of metrics are trending positive.”

Home Depot invests in search keywords

Before consumers can decide how they want to receive their items, they first need to find the merchandise. As a result, Brown says the merchant has focused on improving what it calls “intent search online.”

Brown says Home Depot adjusts how the software algorithm responds to shoppers’ search of basic keywords on HomeDepot.com. Depending on the customer, searching for the keyword “shingle,” can mean different things, she says. A do-it-yourself customer might need a small amount for a smaller-scale project roofing project. Whereas a Home Depot Pro Perks customer might order in bulk for larger projects. The search also pulls up relevant complementary items such as as roof vents, and other materials needed to install shingles.

“As you think about shopping on HomeDepot.com, your search term can mean different things based on who you are or what you’re trying to accomplish,” Brown says. “We continue to update search to handle the demands of the different shopping patterns we see from customers as they engage with us online.”

Sign up

Stay on top of the latest developments in the ecommerce industry. Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 Retail News.

Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Be the first to know when Digital Commerce 360 publishes news content.

The post Home Depot customers opt for ship to home — if the wait isn’t too long appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

Bloomberg News reported last week that several startups tried and failed to get breaks on their bills from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Corp.’s Azure and Google Cloud Platform, as they rush to cut costs to survive the drop in business brought about by the global pandemic. The three companies, which dominate the market for rented computing power and related software services, are indispensable for many modern businesses. The Information reported that AWS had also turned down requests for financial help from large customers.

AWS this week sent some customers an email offering to listen to their concerns. “Whether you need to address financial pressures, support remote work, ensure business continuity or scale to meet unusual demands, we are here to support you and help however we can,” said the message, which was confirmed by a person who had seen the outreach.

The email links to a website that aggregates AWS blog posts about managing costs and using Amazon services more effectively. It also features a contact form to reach out to the cloud-computing provider. CNBC reported on the outreach earlier. An AWS spokesman didn’t immediately comment.

Amazon also provides as part of its regular line of services AWS Loft locations in New York, San Francisco, Tokyo and Tel Aviv , where it provides business start-ups and web technology developers free information and cloud technology workshops on internet-of-things and other cloud applications. The New York and San Francisco AWS Loft locations are slated to be closed until May 4 because of the pandemic.

The editorial staff of Digital Commerce 360 | B2B contributed to this story.

Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 B2B News, published 4x/week, covering technology and business trends in the growing B2B ecommerce industry. Contact editor Paul Demery at paul@digitalcommerce360.com.

Follow us on LinkedIn and be the first to know when new Digital Commerce 360 B2B News content is published.

The post Amazon offers to help cloud customers hit by the pandemic appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

While Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky was courting the hospitality expert, he offered to Uber to Conley’s home to discuss final details of his new position with the startup. The word “Uber” used as a verb caused some confusion.

“I said to him, ‘You’re going to do what?’” laughed Conley on Wednesday at the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition @ RetailX in Chicago. The self-proclaimed bricks-and-mortar guy had to confess his phone wasn’t exactly familiar with the app.

On the third day of his new job as Airbnb’s head of global hospitality and strategy, Conley found himself in a conference room surrounded by a dozen engineers who were half his age and making tech jokes that were going over his head.

“I had been brought into the company as a seasoned expert in my field, but in that particular room, I felt like a newbie amongst those tech geniuses, so I did my best to just be invisible,” he said.

While Conley was excited about the prospect of transforming a small tech startup into a global hospitality giant, he was reporting to someone 21 years younger. Moreover, he worried about his relevancy.

“I realized after my first week on the job with the kind of lingo that was being thrown around that my old-school, bricks-and-mortar wisdom wasn’t all that valuable in this new [online] world,” said Conley.

At a time when there are five generations occupying the same workplace, there can be tension and miscommunication. According to Conley, this is particularly an issue in the retail world, where bricks-and-mortar veterans might not have the digital fluency of ecommerce teams, yet younger employees may not have as much leadership experience. But he said the key is to tap into each group’s strengths and to create an “intergenerational pipeline of wisdom,” or a Match.com for employers to facilitate mentorship programs.

Conley, who spent four years in a full-time role at Airbnb and transitioned into an advisory capacity two years ago, said leveraging different skillsets of employees across all ages is necessary given the growing number of older people who are in the workforce and dealing with professional power shifting to young people. He cited a number of statistics that describe the landscape:

• Nearly 40% of Americans have a boss who is younger than them, and by 2025, the majority of people in the workforce will be in that position.
• The average age of an employee at a Silicon Valley tech giant is 30.
• The fastest-growing demographic in the labor force is people over 60. That group showed a 35% growth in the last five years.
• Between 2016 and 2026, almost half of the labor force growth will come from people 60 and over.

“The more I’ve thought about this, the more I realize that we, as different generations in the workplace often operate like isolationist countries,” Conley said. “We share a continent and borders but don’t share a common dialect or, frankly, point of view sometimes.”

To combat what Conley calls the irrelevancy gap, he counted on a 27-year-old coworker to be his digital intelligence tutor and would ask her to decode 16 different notes he’d scrawl down during meetings filled with technical jargon.

And in return, she gave him an epiphany. One day, she pulled him aside and told him his “fact knowledge”—such as knowing how many rooms a maid cleans in an eight-hour shift—doesn’t matter in the home-sharing world of Airbnb.

Instead, she told him the importance of his fact knowledge is “evaporating,” while his process knowledge is what’s valuable now, such as the best ways to motivate and communicate with fellow employees and keep them in the loop. Conley realized his organizational savvy was what he could offer.

The post IRCE: How different generations navigate a tech-focused world appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

What is desperately needed is nothing short of a radical shift in our contemporary approach to cardiac care. Patients at risk for heart disease display a lackadaisical attitude towards their own health, rarely making positive lifestyle changes or adhering to medications that can thwart the onset of heart problems. Research suggests that 24% of patients who suffer a heart attack do not fill their medications within seven days of discharge, and 34% of heart attack patients with multiple prescriptions stop taking at least one of them within one month of discharge. On the flip side, physicians with the best intentions are faced with insurmountable barriers to providing the best care to their cardiac patient—staff and resource shortages, limited time, and high patient congestion. In the face of this growing crisis, the healthcare industry is beginning to examine Internet of Things (IoT) connected wearable medical devices to help prevent the onset of heart problems, equip physicians and patients with the data they need to better manage heart problems post-diagnosis, and ultimately drive a reduction in heart-related fatalities.

Faster diagnosis and early prevention

Medical wearables can aid in earlier diagnosis of heart conditions, particularly those that are difficult to identify. In order to accurately diagnose an arrhythmia, for example, doctors need to continuously monitor a patient’s ECG for a minimum of a full day, to capture any and all symptoms accurately and comprehensively. Arrhythmias are notoriously difficult to detect and can be intermittent, so detection and diagnosis are improved through long-term continuous monitoring, enabled by IoT. Mobile cardiac telemetry (MCT) devices that provide real-time monitoring of a patient’s heart rhythm over a longer period of time are vital for AFib detection. MCT devices are the only heart monitoring devices that provide complete arrhythmia detection and offer the highest diagnostic yield at 61%, compared to Event monitors at 23% and Holter monitors at 24%.

Post Diagnosis: Better care management and health outcomes

IoT devices are also enabling physicians and patients to turn data into action. Health data that can be measured can also be improved. With real-time medical wearables, physicians can compare a baseline measurement of patient metrics against subsequent patient data collected over a longer period of time, watching as the metrics fluctuate in response to treatment, lifestyle, stress, and other day-to-day factors. The feedback loop is immeasurably shortened, and treatment plans can be implemented earlier for maximum effectiveness. Sensor-fed information can also send out alerts to patients and physicians in real-time so they get event-triggered alerts for an elevated heart-rate or for signs precipitating a heart attack or stroke—speeding up response time in emergency situations and helping avert fatalities.

Medical wearables can also support patients in their self-care and medication management because when patients are able to access their real-time health data with ease and immediacy, they can be empowered to better participate in their own healthcare and in the management of their long-term condition. According to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 80% of deaths from coronary artery disease can be attributed to preventable factors like obesity, poor physical activity, heavy drinking, eating unhealthy foods, and not keeping blood pressure and cholesterol under control. These lifestyle changes could also prevent about 50% of stroke deaths. Medical wearables for cardiac patients can collect clinical-grade data on a patient’s ECG, respiration, physical activity, caloric burn, and other vital signs in real-time—equipping patients with the actionable feedback required in preventing a heart condition or managing a condition once manifest.

Today, health disparities and access gaps between urban and rural communities continue to widen, because rural hospitals and health facilities are closing while those in more urban areas remain open. In fact, one-fifth of Americans live in areas that have physician and healthcare specialist shortages. In Texas, for instance, the closure of rural hospitals affects 20%  of the state’s entire population. This problem is compounded by the fact that there is about a 25%  higher death rate for ischemic heart disease within these already vulnerable populations. As patients with heart problems are discharged from hospitals and begin recovery at home, medical wearables can remotely deliver monitored rehabilitation programs.

Driving long distances and coping with lengthy wait times is burdensome for patients whose health is already frail. Physical distances between healthcare facilities and patients’ homes can be overcome with medical wearables as care services are extended to remote areas that traditional services are not able to reach.

Taking medical wearables a step further: Artificial intelligence

Medical wearables with artificial intelligence can exponentially build upon the speed and accuracy of heart disease diagnoses through remote patient monitoring. Researchers from Oxford University are using AI to improve diagnostic accuracy for heart disease. Cardiologists who assess echocardiograms, which are ultrasonic scans of the heart, miss signs of heart disease 20% of the time. Inadvertently, patients can be sent home and then go on to have a heart attack. The researchers are training a machine learning system to recognize signs of heart disease by studying scans from previous patients, along with data about whether or not the patients went on to have a heart attack in the future. Already, this new system has improved diagnostic accuracy by 90%. We have trained our AI on tens of thousands of patient ECG data to identify abnormalities with the same 90% accuracy, improving data screening for ECG technicians and speeding up response time.

The combined benefits of affordability, flexibility, and increased access to healthcare make medical wearables a feasible and scalable alternative to traditional cardiac care involving lengthy hospital stays for observation and intermittent clinic visits. The importance of both the aforementioned cannot be disregarded; rather, the approach to cardiac care must expand to encompass a preventative mindset and sage triage. Patients, both at risk for heart disease and those already managing a heart condition, must be monitored at home with real-time medical wearables. This will not only massively improve workflow optimization but also ensure that non-acute conditions are managed effectively from the comfort of home.

Waqaas Al-Siddiq is founder and CEO of Biotricity.

The post The Internet of Things is a game changer for heart care appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

But there are two areas of business where Sands, headquartered in Paradise, Nev., doesn’t gamble or take on high risk. Those areas are B2B ecommerce and e-procurement, Sands senior vice president and chief procurement officer Norbert Riezler told attendees last week at the SAP Ariba annual conference in Austin, Texas. SAP Ariba is the electronic networking arm of business operations software company SAP SE.

Each year as the company grows and expands internationally, more of Sands’ corporate purchase contracts are flowing through e-procurement and the SAP Ariba network.

$2.4 billion in purchases

Last year Sands, which operates resort, hotel and gaming properties in Macao (China), Singapore and Las Vegas, processed $2.4 billion worth of business transactions through SAP Ariba.

Norbert Riezler,
Chief Procurement Officer,
Las Vegas Sands

One competitive edge in e-procurement Sands claims to have over other resort and gaming companies is the integration of the SAP Ariba network with its warehouse management system from HighJump Software. “I think we are the only company I am aware of in the hospitality, gaming or integrated resort business that has figured out how to use all of the spend in one solution,” Riezler told attendees.

But in order to use advanced electronic networking integrated with ecommerce and e-procurement applications, it took Sands about 30 months to complete all of the needed integration work, he says. “You need to have an unwavering support from your senior leadership—inevitably there will be a divisional president typically that thinks the system isn’t for them and tries to do a run around so you have top support.”

Lessons learned

Sands also learned other key implementation lessons while launching an integrated business and technology approach to e-procurement. Among them: one leader needs to be in charge and be prepared to spend lots of time making decisions; and that new business processes must be part of the launch.

“You need to be heavily involved both as a procurement or finance leader in launching the system—there are literally hundreds of decisions that have to be made as you are launching it and even post-launch,” Riezler told attendees. “You also really have to start over with your processes—these people that developed the system are really smart, and if you have the system flow the way it was designed and change your processes, you will be much better off launching the system that way.”

The Sands’ e-procurement network through SAP Ariba today is utilized by about 6,000 internal users and another 6,000 users that link to the network as suppliers and receive purchase orders or submit invoices, Riezler says. The network, which handles 800,000 purchase orders annually, is used by Sands to negotiate 8,000 contracts each year.

Busy chickens for busy casinos

“In the last 12 months we put $2.9 billion worth of spend through the system,” he says. “We buy 23 million pounds of beef, 22 million eggs per year from some really busy chickens and we buy six million-rolls of toilet paper—the most important thing is we need it fast.”

Over time, Sands has built its e-procurement system to resemble the just-in-time supply chain methods used by major vehicle manufacturers. “When our chefs come in in the morning and they prepare the dim sum, their orders need to go out that time in the morning, he said.”When we have big conventions with 15,000 guests that you feed three times a day, and when you only have 72 hours to confirm the orders, they need to go out real-time,” Riezler says. “I used to work for Ford Motor Co. and we have introduced many of the just-in-time principles to our industry.”

A major e-procurement network undergoes a lot of stress and, if systems fail, business operations face immediate headaches, he told attendees. “When orders are raised and they don’t go out right away, and our buyers come in early in the morning and realize they haven’t gone out, it is pure hell for them,” he said. “They have to then go and download the order, PDF them, e-mail them out and then typically follow up with a phone call to make sure the suppliers have gotten the orders—so when SAP Ariba does infrastructure upgrades that have system outages, we feel it.”

Networks and systems need to work because Sands does virtually all of its corporate buying and spending, and even contract negotiations, online, Riezler told attendees. “Other than the taxes we pay, I can’t think of anything that doesn’t run through the system, he says.

Sign up for a complimentary subscription to B2BecNews, published 4x/week, covering technology and business trends in the growing B2B ecommerce industry. B2BecNews is owned by Vertical Web Media LLC, which also publishes DigitalCommerce360.com, Internet Retailer and Internet Health Management. Contact Mark Brohan, director of B2B e-commerce research, at mark@verticalwebmedia.com and follow him on Twitter @markbrohan.

Follow us on LinkedIn and be the first to know when new B2BecNews c

The post Las Vegas Sands is a high roller for internet commerce appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

Beginning this month, Walmart shoppers can add items directly to their online shopping carts by saying “Hey Google, talk to Walmart.” Information from prior purchases will help identify the correct brand and size—like whether you drink 1% or skim milk without having to specify, according to Tom Ward, Walmart’s senior vice president of digital operations. In a blog post Tuesday, he said customers can tweak their orders at home or from their smartphone while on the go.

2018 Ecommerce Technology Guide

E-commerce technology coverage as complete as the diverse audience it serves.

View Details

The voice-shopping service comes out of a partnership between the two companies that began in August 2017, one of several alliances Walmart has made in recent years with technology companies including Microsoft Corp., China’s JD.com and Japan’s Rakuten. But the Walmart-Google pairing hasn’t had much to talk about since then, especially after Walmart withdrew from Google’s shopping platform earlier this year.

For Alphabet Inc.’s Google, teaming with the world’s largest retailer could help its digital home assistant bridge the gap with Amazon’s Echo device, commonly known as Alexa. It won’t be easy: Amazon controlled 70% of the 66 million smart speaker devices installed in the U.S. as of December, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. Google Home had just 24%.

Both Amazon and Google also face the challenge of convincing consumers to order by voice, which is tricky for perishable items like fresh salmon. Only 4% of shoppers use voice assistants for grocery planning, according to research from consultant Bain & Co., a fraction of those who own smart speakers. And those who are interested in voice-based grocery shopping already have other options: Rival Kroger Co. has unveiled voice-shopping capabilities through Google.

Google’s home assistant is available on devices including iPhones and JBL portable speakers, Walmart said. The retailer will also expand the service to other platforms in the coming months, it said, a signal that it may be working with Apple Inc. Walmart declined to identify other potential partners.

“We’re kicking off the work with Google, adding others to the mix as time goes on,” Ward said.

Amazon is No. 1 in the Internet Retailer 2018 Top 1000. Walmart is No. 3.

The post Walmart customers can order groceries via Google Home appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

Bosch Tool, based in Mt. Prospect, Illinois, has been drilling down into and refining B2B ecommerce in North America for a dozen years. Ecommerce sales are growing and more than 1,500 customers use its two B2B portals.

Bosch Tool has aggressive growth plans in store for B2B e-commerce—and for digitally transforming how the company is using artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of things (IoT) to interact with its dealers and customers.

In this question-and-answer session, Bosh Tool mobile and IoT lead Eli Share and ecommerce specialist Meghan Jones detail why and how Bosch Tool made ecommerce a strategic priority and what the future has in store for running a more digitally enhanced business.

Q: Why is B2B e-commerce a priority for Robert Bosch Tool Corp. and how is that priority accelerating?

Meghan Jones, ecommerce specialist, Robert Bosch Tool

MJ: There has been an incredible shift in demand and usage of online resources over the past years, and we see that demand increasing exponentially, now and in the future. As the demand for online resources increases, we must continue to develop our B2B ecommerce and digital products and strategies to stay relevant and beneficial to our customers.

Q: When did Bosch Tool first launch a B2B e-commerce program and why?

MJ: Bosch first launched their B2B North American program in 2007 with an e-commerce portal for internal sales. This portal was expanded to our customer network the next year—now known as Boschlink.

It was an identified need that Bosch needed to develop a digital relationship with our customers to supplement our existing relationships with them. Boschlink was created to address this need and to provide our customers with a destination for all things Bosch—a centralized and personalized resource for all our brands, products, innovations and promotional opportunities.

Q: How many B2B websites and portals does Bosch Tool operate? What are they and what type of business buyer is using each website or portal? Boschlink, for example, is primarily used by dealers.

MJ: We are currently offering two B2B portals with a third on the way. We have Boschlink, which is our B2B ecommerce solution for our dealers. We also have a portal dedicated to Bluehound, Bosch’s asset management system.

Eli Share, mobile and IoT lead, Robert Bosch Tool

ES: Bluehound is designed to address concerns of the general contractor managing multiple jobsites and warehouses. This is a software system designed to allow companies to manage their individual inventory. It was a portal with an IoT component to give last-seen location.

MJ: Boshlink allows us to be in contact with our power tool purchasers. It streamlines our purchasing process, allows for transparency of our product, customized pricing and creates a direct channel of communication for Bosch to our dealers.

Q: How many products and in what categories does Bosch Tool carry online across all its B2B websites and portals?

MJ: We offer online essentially any product that can be purchased from Bosch in North America—which is upwards of 20,000 active products spread across all our brands. Our product assortment ranges from tools, measuring tools and accessories to replacement parts for those products.

Q: Who are your primary online customers and how many of them are there?

MJ: Our online customers are primarily made up of our professional and industrial contracting suppliers, spread out across the U.S. and the Caribbean. Annually, we grow in customer usage every year. At the end of 2018, we had over 1,500 customers actively using Boschlink.

Q: Are B2B web sales growing for Bosch Tool? If so, what were B2B web sales in 2018, how much did they grow and what percent of total sales do web sales now represent?

MJ: Boschlink continues to grow.

Q: What are the latest features you’ve added to your websites or portals such as Boschlink. Why were these added?

MJ: A few of our most recent features include:

• A complete overhaul of our order history and tracking pages, with live tracking links to our shipment carriers.
• Streamlined the ability to initiate returns online.
• Added in promotional checks earlier in the purchasing process.
• Compliance with California Proposition 65 on appropriate products.
• Updated and digital cooperative and rebate information that our customer network can directly access.

Several of the features were implemented based on direct feedback from our users and customers—enhancements that would improve their experience and relationship with Boschlink (and Bosch overall). Alternatively, we also added new features to be legally compliant, such as adhering to California Proposition 65, or to showcase dealer programs that our user base participates in. (Editor’s note: Proposition 65 requires businesses to notify California residents about significant amounts of chemicals in the products they purchase, in their homes or workplaces, or that are released into the environment.)

Q: What new updates are planned for 2019 and why?

MJ: 2019 enhancements for Boschlink will be light, focused on promotional content displays and implementing tools to increase personalization for our users. We are focused on re-platforming Boschlink in the next two years, so anything new that is brought to today’s Boschlink in that time will be focused on enhancing the user experience.

Q: Digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and the internet of things—are they being rolled out by Bosch Tool? If so, how are you using these new digital technologies and why and where?

ES: Bosch sees connectivity as a guiding principle that can be accelerated with IoT and artificial intelligence. Bosch Power Tool exhibits the feelings of the whole organization by implementing these solutions as well.

Today we have several solutions rolled out to the market. These include our smart-connected cordless tools and our asset management system, Bluehound. These products utilize IoT technology to create efficiency and transparency for the construction site.

The construction site today is not as advanced as it could be, and Bosch is addressing this head on. We are utilizing our expertise in the manufacturing space to bring similar mindset and technologies out into the wild on commercial construction sites. This is technology with a purpose.

We believe nothing we produce will be used unless we enhance productivity, increase efficiency, and provide technology with a singular focus on the user. It is this combination of Bosch’s innovations that will be the game changer in the connected construction site of the future.

Q: What are your biggest challenges for B2B e-commerce and how are you overcoming them?

MJ: Our biggest challenges consist of having a complex, customer-specific pricing and promotions set-up that challenges our ability to cleanly and concisely display this information to our customers. We have made a concerted effort to simplify our pricing and standardize our more common promotions, as well as ensure that our B2B portal has a live connection with our enterprise resource planning system (ERP) to see the best and truest pricing for a customer in real time, which has improved the site’s performance and the consistency of pricing.

With user experience, we are still delivering a B2B portal that doesn’t always meet user expectations, especially compared to B2C shopping experiences. We’ve addressed this by making our prices more transparent during the buying process, improving our product data offering and others. However, we know that there’s still a long way to go to provide a better overall experience.

The post Q&A with Bosch Tool: Why it’s drilling deeper into ecommerce appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

If the scores of personal health care devices at the Consumer Electronics Show last week are any indication, it’s clear that the Apple Watch has kicked off a rush by high-tech companies to capitalize on people’s worries about their health.

The latest version of the watch, which was announced last fall, detects a fibrillating heart and a propensity for falls. What other manufacturers learned from that is that you can make money if you can create a worry about a problem that people didn’t realize they had and also create a solution for that worry via a high-tech product. Many of the products at the mammoth annual show seemed to be following that strategy.

In a rush to brush?

Take, for instance, the problem of the length of time it takes to brush your teeth. With Y-Brush, you can cut down that onerous two-minute recommended time to 10 seconds, and supposedly still get your teeth cleaner.

Makers of the Y-shaped device say it brushes all your top and then bottom teeth in five seconds each, giving each tooth four times the brush exposure it would get with a typical two-minute tooth-by-tooth brushing regimen recommended for users of a conventional electric toothbrush.

The company says its device removes 15 percent more plaque than a traditional toothbrush. And, of course, you’ve freed up an additional 110 seconds in your life each time you brush.

The $125 Y-Brush handle and brush will be sold online this year; additional brush heads, which need to be replaced every six months, will cost $25.

Know before you gotta go

Another problem: You can’t always predict when you need to go to the bathroom. DFree, a sensor worn a half-inch above the pubis bone, predicts when an individual will have to urinate, giving the wearer a chance to gauge how long they can be away from a toilet.

The DFree monitors changes in bladder size and transmits that information to a smartphone app, which sends a customizable alert to the person when it’s time to find a toilet. The company says it doesn’t work for pregnant women or toilet-training toddlers.

The unit costs $500, or it can be rented for $40 per month, with the rental price applied to an eventual purchase.

Making health a cinch

Detecting falls, now a feature of the Apple Watch, is showing up in other devices. Like in this belt, which also can alert you to weight gain as it senses the belt getting tighter. (Yeah, like old-fashioned belts do.) The Welt smart belt, developed with seed money from Samsung, also monitors the time you spend sitting and the number of steps taken. Connected to a smartphone app (naturally), Welt suggests when a user should stand or change their eating habits and will also send a customized alert after a fall.

For top-condition cognition 

There was no shortage at the show of devices to improve your mental abilities. BrainTap, an app-based subscription series of audio music and vocal stimulations, provides visualization exercises that the company says will retrain your brain to allow you to relax, reduce stress and maximize your ability to lose weight.

The company charges $10 to $30 a month for the series, based on whether you need to address only one or more conditions.

As an added benefit, the company also sells an oddly priced $547 headset that beams blue light into your eyes. It uses light to stimulate your ears, following precepts of something called auriculotherapy, which employs light to activate, the company says, “the meridians known to directly affect the body’s organs and systems.”

The electronics industry seems to believe it can make money convincing people they should be worried about their hearts. A number of products that take a simplified form of an electrocardiogram (EKG) are already on the market, the Apple Watch and Kardia among them. The WitCard, from WitMonki, is a credit card-size device that, by touching two thumbs and one index finger, sends results to one’s health care provider where, using the company’s WitDisplayer portal, EKG readings over time can be compared and appropriate action taken when necessary.

The battery-operated WitCard is undergoing trials for European Union certification and approval by the Food and Drug Administration, and could cost about $120.

Monitoring your energy

Ever worry about whether you are burning carbs or fats? Well, now there’s a way. Breathe into the Lumen device each morning to get a reading of your carbon dioxide concentration. Based on that, a phone app determines how yesterday’s sleep, exercise and eating choices affected your ability to burn carbs or fats. Lumen also promises to tell you if you have sufficient energy stores before exercising (and what to do about it), why you feel tired all the time and how to alter your diet to lose weight.

The company expects to ship its $249 device this August.

Monitoring your sleep

Philips, the giant electronics company, has become the latest company to soothe our worries about not getting enough sleep. Its SmartSleep, a $400 headband worn in bed, emits audible tones that supposedly detect and boost slow-wave, or deep, sleep — a time when breathing and heart rate are at their slowest.

The intent of SmartSleep is to keep the wearer in the deep-sleep zone longer; it does not increase the amount of time one sleeps or help someone fall or stay asleep. And, if you are older, you are out of luck, as the device is recommended for people between 18 and 50. Philips says the slow-wave activity declines as we age and becomes more difficult to detect.

A high-tech pill dispenser

Finally, an obvious problem: how to remember to take multiple drugs multiple times per day. And, of course, there is a just-as-obvious solution: automated drug-dispensing devices.

One of the latest products to attempt this is RxPense, which offers high-tech bells and whistles. The machine is loaded with hermetically sealed pill blister cards by a participating pharmacy. Once the card’s bar code confirms it’s the proper one and loaded into the machine, the patient is identified by facial recognition, an RFID bracelet or a PIN, and the proper pill pack, confirmed by the bar code on the packaging, is dispensed at the set time.

But wait, there is more. A camera records the dispensed pills and the patient’s removal of them. Missed doses are not dispensed.

The RxPense can be leased for $150 a month.

The device can’t tell whether the patient has actually ingested the pill. For that, pills will need to include a digestible sensor to track its trip through the body. The FDA approved Abilify MyCite, the first drug with a built-in tracking sensor, in 2017.

Don’t be surprised to see a device at next year’s show that can tell you where those tagged pills are.

Keep up with latest coverage on digital healthcare by signing up for Internet Health Management News today.

The post The electronics industry sees money in your health appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

Google’s voice-activated assistant will be integrated with new devices including DISH Network Corp.’s Hopper receivers, Sonos Inc. (No. 217 in the Internet Retailer 2018 Top 500) speakers, KitchenAid appliances and Samsung Electronics Co. televisions, the company said Tuesday at CES in Las Vegas.

Google, Apple Inc. (No.2 ) and Amazon.com Inc. (No. 1) are battling to distribute their digital assistants as widely as possible in a bid to dominate an emerging new way to interact with computers. Each company is selling its own internet-connected speakers and working with other hardware makers to control everything from doorbells to microwaves.

Alphabet Inc.’s Google is trying to position its assistant as the smartest of the bunch, based on its work in artificial intelligence. One example: the company said Tuesday that its assistant can now be used to translate a live conversation between two people speaking different languages.

2018 Ecommerce Technology Guide

E-commerce technology coverage as complete as the diverse audience it serves.

View Details

The post Google announces digital assistant updates at CES appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

Palo Alto, California-based HPE committed $4 billion through 2022 to the Intelligent Edge, a patchwork of initiatives meant to accelerate the company’s artificial intelligence, internet of things and distributed computing offerings. Neri has linked the business to HPE’s relatively fast-growing networking arm, Aruba Networks, as one way to diversify the company from a server market that’s cyclical and a storage hardware market that’s shown signs of stagnation.

Antonio Neri, CEO, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

“We will see a return on that investment over the next two years,” Neri said Monday in a taped interview with Bloomberg Television. “This is a business that’s really growing fast. In fact, we’re growing the business double digits.”

HPE sells about 50% of its products through e-commerce, it says. That includes products sold by its Enterprise Online Store, where buyers can configure and order large complex systems like network servers with multiple blades or server modules for computing and data storage; and its Parts Storefor ordering replacement parts. HPE also provides an online marketplacewhere buyers can view information on HPE products and click to the e-commerce sites of resellers and other channel partners to purchase products and services.

At a conference in Madrid on Monday, HPE announced Composable Cloud, a hybrid platform that will use AI software to allow customers to connect data on HPE hardware with data stored in public clouds from Amazon, Microsoft and others. “Cloud is not a destination,” Neri said. “It is an experience and we need to compose our cloud to the specific workloads.”

After missing out on cloud-computing services that are driving growth in information technology, HPE is turning to the Intelligent Edge as its last best hope to power sales through the next decade. What the company won’t be doing is buying revenue through mergers and acquisitions, Neri said, rather it will seek deals for intellectual property and talent.

Despite a ripple of consolidation among software companies this year, Neri said he views the high tech valuations as limiting M&A among hardware companies.

“Valuations have to make sense, and at this point, I think valuations are a little high,” he said. “That’s why we see a little bit of correction going on in the market. At this point in time, our focus is really on execution.

Sign up for a complimentary subscription to B2BecNews, published 4x/week, covering technology and business trends in the growing B2B e-commerce industry. B2BecNews is published by Vertical Web Media LLC, which also publishes DigitalCommerce360.com, Internet Retailer and Internet Health Management. Contact B2BecNews editor Paul Demery at paul@verticalwebmedia.com and follow him on Twitter @pdemery.

Follow us on LinkedIn and be the first to know when new B2BecNews content is published.

The post Why HPE is investing billions in IoT and AI appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.