I've been so swamped since returning from the ITExpo that I haven't had time to do justice to some of the great companies who tool time to brief me on their offerings. I'm working hard to get caught up.

At the Expo I met with Rod Hamlin, EVP of Sales and Marketing with LiteScape, and I want to share one VoIP solution that really demonstrates leadership and creativity in deployment.

When it comes to VoIP deployment for Mitsushoki It's all about the jeans. Customer service and bluejeans. Cisco and LiteScape are driving sales with a pilot consumer focused retail solution for the large Japanese retailer’s commercial stores. The solution, implemented during a period between January 31 – February 13 as a trial project of the RFID-based future stores, creates "intelligent fitting rooms" which offer a significant reduction in the time and labor needed to search stock and product information, greatly enhancing both employee productivity and customer satisfaction.

Every solution addresses a pain point of some kind. The pain point for Mitsukoshi was the painful realization that when the jeans don't fit in a changing room, if the customer has to get dressed and go hunt for another pair, the sale usually walks right out the door.

This Cisco “store of the future” vision combines LiteScape’s RFID/XML-based applications with Cisco CallManager and IP-based devices to offer shoppers self-service, IP communications throughout the stores and directly from their fitting rooms. Busy shoppers can have merchandise delivered directly to their fitting room without needing to exit the room, walk out into the store, and search the shelves. Utilizing LiteScape’s applications, Mitsukoshi has automated and streamlined a number of customer and employee tasks including product browsing, product lookup by SKU, inventory checks in the store, and the ability for customers to contact live agents to place orders.

At the Ginza store, where this trial system was introduced in combination with other solutions related to the RFIDbased  Future Stores system, sales increased 15.8% over the same month in the previous year. “We were able to increase customer service by lowering the wait time. Customers can access real-time information themselves and talk to a sales person quickly and when desired,” said a spokesperson for Mitsukoshi. ”These applications help differentiate our service from the competition and in return build customer loyalty.”

The IP devices are easily installed in a limited space without imposing on the customer experience, and serve as an information terminal which directly integrates with the company’s existing enterprise-wide customer and inventory database. This allows for access to and management of customer information—such as account information, purchase history, product and size inventory status—in a secure, authenticated manner.

This particular deployment demonstrates creativity from Cisco, and great thinking from LiteScape. In my chat with Rod, he described several other equally creative uses of VoIP terminals and technology. I confess, listening to Rod's descriptions I was both impressed and disappointed. Impressed by the depth and breadth of creativity and disappointedby the realization that every really innovative and creative solution he described was in Asia.

I asked Rod about retailers and businesses in North America, and while he wouldn't really commit one way or another, he indicated that the Asian business climate seems to be far more engaged in moving to the future and embracing new unified communications technologies.

LiteScape  was a new find for me. I'd heard of them, but admit I was really aware of all the things they do. After hearing some of the stories about their collaboration, CRM and identity management efforts, I'll be watching them a lot closer. You can count on hearing more down the road from these folks.


Technorati Tags: LiteScape, Cisco, Mitsukoshi, VoIP, RFID, XML. unified communications