Walmart is rolling out a program to send shoppers e-receipts via its mobile app, and while they're surely thrilled to save a few trees the real impetus is the wealth of customer data it can provide.

Ensuring driver safety is the biggest priority of fleet managers, according to a survey conducted at the 2014 NAFA Institute and Expo by GE Capital Fleet Services. With more than a third (35 percent) of fleet managers identifying it as their main concern, driver safety outpaced cost-savings goals and workforce productivity (27 percent and 22 percent, respectively) as the top concern for the second year in a row.

Organizational, operational and technology challenges are hampering retailers' omnichannel efforts; 40 percent of retailers report they are having difficulty integrating back-office technology across all of their channels.

While retailers are facing challenges in delivering the reporting functionality that business users need to enable data-driven decision-making, they are optimistic about Big Data's ability to provide breakthroughs in analysis capabilities across a number of retail processes, says a study by 1010data Inc. In fact, almost all surveyed executives (96 percent) agreed that Big Data initiatives are important in helping retailers stay competitive. They said Big Data insights are most beneficial for merchandising (53 percent) and marketing (48 percent), followed by store operations (42 percent), e-commerce (42 percent), supply chain (27 percent), finance (23 percent), and loss prevention (21 percent).