Genieomics Service Offerings

As much as the technology behind the RetailGenie must appear simple and usable to the retailer's customer (the end user), Genieomics intends to facilitate the marketing, sales, implementation and return-on-investment by providing the necessary services to make the solution work. A complex set of technologies are involved that may fall outside of the retailer's area of expertise to deploy. These are divided into technical services, marketing services and media services.

Technical Services include pre-installation site surveys, infrastructure installation (the wireless network to support the devices, computer hardware and software), software customization, technical support, and integration with other in-store systems (point-of-sale, inventory, etc.). At all times, the technical services will be overseen by a member of the Genieomics team. However, given the variety of store systems, geographic locations, and stakeholders in the installation, the company plans to partner with a technical integration firm to accomplish these tasks. This allows the retailer to deal with a trusted partner while Genieomics concentrates on its core competencies. If the relationship with one particular vendor evolves over time, an exclusive partnership is conceivable. Potential partners for this include Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Dell, EDS, and CSC.

Marketing Services include advisory consulting to help the retailer determine the ideal pilot program to adopt the Genie, create strategies with regard to branding the service, extending the marketing effort outside the store (using the web, catalogues, and call centers), and measuring the return-on-investment for deployment using conventional survey techniques. This sector is also best served by working with a marketing partner interested in the retail sector.

Media Services are characterized by the creation and maintenance of marketing and sales audio libraries. This is a technical, pay-per-use service that Genieomics will maintain. Audio script authoring and translation is not only a potential profit center for Genieomics, it positions the company to act as a conduit between store-specific ads, retailer-specific messages, and brand-specific messages. This last statement warrants further explanation.

Each retail company has a message about its products and services, of specific interest to its buyer community at large. Each individual store and region may have a complementary or alternative way of approaching its customers, based on local culture, languages, or other demographics. In addition most retailers also transmit brand and product information controlled by the manufacturers of the product they sell. When a retail sales associate speaks to a customer one-on-one, the appropriate message must be delivered, representing a set of complex choices and judgments.

The long-term view of the audio libraries at the heart of the RetailGenie is a cooperative approach among the stakeholders to present this information consistently at the point of sale. Where possible, it empowers the following scenario:

brand information and product descriptions come directly from the manufacturer;
brand comparisons and promotion information may originate from the retail chain's headquarters;
inventory movement can be coordinated from the local distributor, who triggers sales and other promotions, and distributes backorder and availability information;
article location and local inventory clearances originate from the store manager.

Genieomics will be in a position to discuss this relationship with manufacturers and distributors when the product enjoys a notable installation base.