Smartphones may be among retailers' strongest allies this holiday season, according to Deloitte's annual holiday survey of consumer spending intentions and trends.

Josh Neblett, co-founder and chief executive of online retailer GreenCupboards, is busy planning how he'll get the word out about his "eco-friendly" products during the holidays, including e-mail campaigns, Facebook ads, and joint promotions with suppliers. One item not on his list: The daily deal coupons popular in 2011.

Canadian luxury leather goods retailer Danier Leather is piloting a radio frequency identification system at three of its Toronto-area stores, intended to ensure that products are replenished on the sales floor as they are sold to customers, as well as reduce the number of labor hours related to counting inventory.

While Gartner isn't significantly raising its global IT growth forecast - which it revised downward earlier in the year - its relatively flat forecast doesn't apply to at least one sector of information technology: the big data labor market.

DeltaTRAK, a cold chain, environmental monitoring and food safety management solutions provider, has introduced the Cold Chain Vaccine Monitoring Card.

After Steve and Lori Dockendorf's two oldest children left their dairy farm to go to college, the husband-and-wife owners of a 100-cow farm in Watkins, Minn., had to figure out how to replace the labor they'd lost. The traditional solution would have been to hire a couple of extra hands. Instead, the Dockendorfs went with robots: robots to help feed the cows, robots to help clean the barn, even robots that can milk the cows.

Every business needs to "go digital." Data about customers, competitors, suppliers and employees are exploding. Ninety percent of all data were created in the past two years. By 2016, there will be 3 billion internet users globally, and the internet economy will reach $4.2tr in the G-20 nations. No company or country can afford to ignore this phenomenon.

Merging of channels is a hot topic, catapulted by the suddenness of mobile popularity. But beyond the buzz, companies need to provide the right mix of services, messages and pricing. So often that isn't the case.

FoodLink, a buying platform that connects fresh food retailers and wholesalers to a network of more than 2,000 supplier companies, will acquire TRUETRAC, a provider of mobile traceability solutions to growers, harvesters, packers and shippers of fresh-packed produce. The combined company will be the food industry's first integrated network for produce traceability that links crop planning, harvesting, packing, order management, shipping, receiving and individual item tracking from the field to the supermarket checkout line.

Is updating your digital signage with a mobile device really such a good idea? That's the question raised by the recent announcement that Swedish retail giant ICA will begin using mobile apps next month for making changes to its in-store signs.