SOUTHLAKE, Texas -- Characterizing mobile as an opportunity to extend a retailer’s brand as well as managers’ access to business intelligence, officials with The Pinnacle Corp. opened their 2015 users’ conference on a note of raising expectations.
Before about 200 attendees at the annual user forum, Bob Johnson, president of the Arlington, Texas-based company, talked about plans to extend access to reports and analytics via mobile devices.
“It used to be you had to go to your desk or to the reporting personnel,” Johnson said. “Now [information] will extend out to where your management teams are.”
In addition to talking about upcoming mobile capabilities, Johnson recapped a few recent company achievements:
- Training processes, having developed a program for users to continually hone their application skills.
- EMV, with extensive updates done to accommodate Europay MasterCard Visa requirements.
- Altria rebate support, with work going into helping users participate in the tobacco manufacturer’s latest programs.
- Inventory management, with an increasing number of users opting for item-level inventory and computer-assisted ordering.
- Loyalty, with its program growing in areas like promotions.
Other speakers included Jenny Bullard, CIO of Flash Foods, Waycross, Ga., who looked back on her company’s involvement with Pinnacle, evolving from scanning and backoffice development to its current loyalty and mobile-payment platforms. She said that when her supervisors review the year, they always say the best things they’ve ever done to support profitability have been their loyalty and computer-assisted-ordering programs.
Another opening session speaker focused on raising expectations. John Brenkus, CEO and director of BASE Productions, a TV-content creator based in Washington, D.C., has developed science programs focused on sports for channels such as Discovery, Fox and ESPN. The multiple Emmy-award winner said oftentimes people set their expectations too low.
He gave the example of the four-minute mile. It took decades for runners to break it, but once done, dozens followed. In a similar way, he felt that society’s expectations for girls and sports are far too low. Those standards should rise to allow for greater excellence.
“Make sure you’re not setting a silly limit or round number,” Brenkus said. “What is your four-minute mile and what can you do to break it?
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