Toshiba Debuts 'Mission Control' for Retail Intelligence
Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions has opened a new center to provider retailers with enhanced intelligence.
The company on Wednesday (April 19) announced the launch of its Global Services Command Center at its headquarters in Durham, North Carolina.
“The ‘mission control’ site for the company’s Proactive Availability Services enables retailers to activate intelligence about their retail store systems by predicting, diagnosing, and resolving system needs quickly and remotely, giving retailers peace of mind and minimizing downtime,” Toshiba said in a news release.
According to the release, Proactive Availability Services offers remote, secure monitoring insights for in-store system technology that lets retailers gauge the “technological health” of their stores and diagnose issues in real time, and then resolve those issues “without any action needed from the retailer.”
“Our passion for retail drives us to deliver systems and tailored solutions to improve business performance and operate stores more efficiently to keep delighting shoppers with rewarding experiences,” Rance Poehler, Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions’ president and CEO, said in the news release.
“Today, we support over 50,000 client locations worldwide and 5 million devices, including Toshiba’s and dozens of others, with plans to increase that number in the coming years.”
PYMNTS spoke with Poelher last year about some of the factors pushing retailers to upgrade their digital capabilities. These upgrades include improved self-checkout solutions and loss prevention technology.
“We have some customers that were eComm-based high-volume retailers that are now thinking brick-and-mortar,” he said. “So that point, that legacy applications are holding them back, with apps that go back 10, 20, 30 years [and involve] millions of dollars of customization, is the driver that’s keeping our customers from really gaining some of the efficiency they want to.”
The launch of the command center came a little more than a week after Toshiba announced that it was extending the reach of its point-of-sale (POS) network with the help of POS firm BlueStar.
“The strategic partnership with BlueStar provides unique benefits to both organizations,” Bill Campbell, Toshiba head of global sales, said in a news release.
“Leveraging Toshiba’s industry-leading retail technology, BlueStar’s network of resellers is empowered to connect retailers with the innovative solutions they need to stay ahead of the competition and connect with consumers.”