New retail innovation centre to revolutionise Singapore’s retail industry

SINGAPORE — A first-of-its-kind Retail Innovation Centre for Enterprises (RICE) was launched today (June 16) by the Singapore Institute Retail Studies (SIRS) at the opening of SIRS’s new campus at the Lifelong Learning Institute. The launch was graced by Dr Amy Khor, Senior Minister of State for Manpower and Health.

RICE aims to revolutionise Singapore’s retail industry, inspire productivity and tackle the manpower crunch among retailers by being a “one-stop service” for them.

This will be done through educating retailers on latest technologies, such as payment solutions, mobile applications and Enterprise Resource Planning management software.

Examples of such mobile applications include Snap to Tell, where consumers can scan their mobile phones on product tags to retrieve instructions and product demonstrations on said products. Retailers will be able to interact with these consumers and share product information efficiently through Snap to Tell.

To help retailers with adopting and implementing such technologies in RICE, SIRS has also partnered with the Singapore Productivity Centre to launch training programmes and workshops for retailers — both frontline and management staff — from next month onwards.