Europe embraces self-service shopping

Assisted shopping is gaining momentum in Europe as retailers including Tesco, Waitrose and Casino adopt self-service devices in store, reports OnWindows.

A Tesco express store has opened in the UK with five self-service tills, supervised by just one member of staff. Furthermore, supermarket chain Waitrose recently implemented a Quick Check system, which enables shoppers to scan items as they navigate the store, pack and pay - all without direct help from a sales assistant.

Retailers in mainland Europe have also shown a recent enthusiasm for assisted retail. Auchan, Casino and Co-op have all invested in Datalogic Mobile's ShopEvolution - an integrated solution for self-shopping that uses Joya handheld devices.

Cisco Systems' Release 8.0 of its unified communications (UC) system offers new capabilities, including WebEx Email for enterprise e-mail without Microsoft Exchange, says Sci-Tech.

Cisco said its UC applications can be readily deployed in both legacy and virtual environments and that the update boosts self-service for contact centres.

Designed to "reduce costs and increase operating efficiencies between and within global enterprises," Release 8.0 features new capabilities for e-mail, customer care, video-conferencing, sharing documents, social-networking, and other areas.

Seeking to cash-in on a rise in Web casting among government, corporates and education, Australian company Viocorp has unveiled its software-as-a-service Web casting tool, Viocast, reports Computerworld.

The tool allows users to log in over the Web to create their own on-demand Web casts incorporating PDFs, Powerpoints, a registration engine, Q&A, user polls and surveys.

According to Ian Gardener, chief executive at Viocorp, the company is offering the product as a fully managed production service, a self-service product, and through channel partners selling into markets such as hospitality.