Retail is facing battles on all fronts. Up against Amazon's streamlined operations on one side, and a higher demand for flawless customer service and experience on the other, it's either think or sink for many. However, AI has thrown some early adopters a lifeline. As Amazon has proven with its stranglehold on the retail industry, online shopping is unquestionably the future.

Customer relationship management is a term you've likely heard if you have worked in the tech space. CRM software solutions have not always been as far-reaching as they are today. Over the last 40 years, CRM has evolved from a range of disparate business solutions developed for various customer needs. The earliest CRM tools were devices like Rolodexes, which you can hardly even find these days.

Amid shifting consumer habits and the digitization of everything, the retail landscape has undergone significant transformations over the past decade, and it continues to evolve as quickly as ever. These transformations bring about a slew of challenges and opportunities for retailers to improve the overall shopping experience. One technique for increasing engagement is gamification.

There's a reason that Amazon's stock skyrocketed 28 percent in 2018, a notable outlier amid the broader market trends. The behemoth retailer is bolstered by a few key differentiators when stacked against the competition -- but let's backtrack for a moment to examine the state of the current online marketplace. In truth, there's an expectation in the market that buying online is cheaper.

Mobile search and buying continue to grow as the chosen means for consumers' online shopping, with the market set to reach an estimated $218 billion in 2019. By 2021, it's estimated that 72.9 percent of online purchases will be made on a mobile device. If you factor in the Millennial and Generation Z demographics, virtually all sales soon will be mobile-generated.

I grew up thinking the Mall of America was an unbelievable epicenter of retail commerce. Touted as the biggest mall in the world -- even equipped with an amusement park -- the Minnesota complex boasted stores of all kinds: toys, clothing, furniture, home furnishings. Then this thing called "e-commerce" came along and basically made the Mall of America seem like Main Street in small-town America.

Learning to code, regardless of the path a child chooses to take, is crucial today. Research shows us that this knowledge will be important in any career. As both a female leader in technology and a mother of a 10-year old boy, I am acutely aware of its critical importance in both my professional and personal life. Coding is a necessary literacy in this technological age.

The artificial intelligence revolution has been going on for a while, but that does not mean all of software research and development is part of it. It is, nonetheless, an interesting example of what pushes the software industry forward. The ideas and techniques that brought machine learning into existence were developed over the span of several decades.

For online retailers, creating an unmatched customer experience is not only a top priority -- it is also a business imperative. They must make sure the items customers want to order are in stock, and that the orders are packaged correctly and shipped quickly, and delivered to the right address. Focusing solely on these necessities tends to be a shortsighted way of viewing the process, however.

We're living in a time when customer expectations change particularly fast, and retailers that can't keep up get left behind. A consumer who enjoys the online shopping experience at an e-store automatically begins to expect the same level of service from every virtual point of sale. Thus, the expectation loop is born, and the only thing for retailers to do is to innovate, innovate and innovate.

Technology by its nature changes the market. The introduction of efficient solutions spurred by technology to meet consumer demand creates new positive effects across an economy. Plenty of industries -- entertainment, transportation, the press and retail, for example -- have experienced changes in business models, delivery methods and competitors, due to the development of new technologies.

Sales teams are tasked with nurturing leads and driving them to a sale. In order to do this, they need to maintain a clear record of communication with each prospect. This is especially important as the customer journey requires several touchpoints. As customers get deeper into the journey, strategic face-to-face meetings must take place to generate real business outcomes.

Decision makers in any sales organization know that forecasting correctly is both art and science. To predict the unforeseen successfully, you must use every piece of logic and reasoning available to help you make your predictions reality. When developing a strategic forecasting approach, your business needs to take a number of items into consideration simultaneously -- and that is no easy feat.

As e-commerce has gained serious momentum over the past 10 years, there have been dire predictions about the impending death of brick-and-mortar retail. The narrative has been framed largely as "technology is killing retail," but the reality is not quite so simple. While technology undoubtedly has transformed the retail landscape, it also has been pushing the industry forward.

Year over year, we see the numbers. In 2017, e-commerce represented 49 percent of all total retail growth, up 16 percent. If this year's $119.99 billion holiday shopping season spend indicates anything, it's that 2018 is projected to be yet another banner year for commerce. Online shopping will hit unprecedented, never-before-seen rates of growth, and it'll be all thanks to technology.

E-commerce fraud is an ongoing problem for online merchants and credit card companies. It has been growing at twice the rate of e-commerce sales. Identity theft traditionally has been one of the most common sources of e-commerce fraud, but online merchants increasingly have been suffering more from chargeback fraud, which requires them to absorb the costs of disputed credit card transactions.

The borderless promise of e-commerce doesn't mean one size fits all. Your business can have customers from around the globe, but if you want to keep them and grow, it is crucial to understand local shopper preferences and behaviors, and be able to respond to them. Without localization, you won't have an effective go-to-market strategy, and your opportunity for growth will stall.

Americans are used to hearing the refrain, "We pay the sales tax," from mattress sellers and car dealerships during big sales weekends. The phrase, "You pay the sales tax," however, is something we're all going to become a lot more familiar with in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling in South Dakota v. Wayfair. That's because the Wayfair decision reverses a precedent set in 1967 and upheld in 1992.

Metrics matter. In business they measure sales, they measure profits, they measure brand health. Marketers measure their reputations, their ad recall, and their shares-of-market. They measure tweets and shares and all sorts of social networking outreach. With all their measuring, marketers haven't yet located the silver bullet, but really smart marketers have caught the glint.

There's one competitor we underestimated this year. It's slowly draining the attention of every human on the planet. It plays into almost all human needs -- as they are defined by the Maslow Hierarchy. It's the rectangular status-seeking device in your hands. That's right. It's your smartphone. Maslow's needs start with the basics. Starting at the bottom of the pyramid, we all need food and water.

With the holidays fast approaching, are you looking to buy presents online? The holiday season has become synonymous with online shopping. This isn't really surprising as physical stores usually attract crowds of deal hunters. This often conjures up images of throngs of people waiting in line outside the store, some even camping out. This activity is tolerable for some and even fun for others.

From technology innovation to the workplace, the business landscape has been evolving rapidly, and companies now are tasked with adapting to fast change in a world of digital transformation. There is one element that will remain a constant requirement for success: meeting the needs of customers and delivering a quality experience. Nurturing customer relationships is vital for a company's success.

Black Friday made its debut sometime in the 1960s as the day to help retailers move from the red to the black in profits. The day-after-Thanksgiving shopping extravaganza has grown well beyond its roots since then. Last year, at the peak of Black Friday, shoppers were spending nearly $1 million per minute. However, the origins of Black Friday were pre-Internet.

Today's customer feedback world is extremely complex with data coming from a variety of sources. With the growing number of cross-functional teams and silos within an organization, leaders have been finding it increasingly difficult to capture the full 360-degree view of the customer to drive true change within an organization. While it's clear that problems exist, what's less straightforward is why.

International e-commerce has become more pervasive and sophisticated in recent years. In 2017, 1.66 billion people worldwide purchased goods online. During the same year, global e-retail sales amounted to $2.3 trillion, and that figure could grow to $4.48 trillion by 2021. E-commerce providers must continue to innovate to ensure they take full advantage of opportunities outside their home market.

I don't have to tell you how difficult it is to find and attract customers online. With millions and millions of businesses all vying for attention, the Internet has quickly turned into a very crowded place. But, believe it or not, there's opportunity in all that clutter, and if you approach your marketing and visibility right, you can easily rise to the top.

The holiday shopping season is kicking off! It is only a matter of time before carols and bright lights greet us in malls and shopping centers. One popular item on many of this year's wish lists is the Velvet Lip Kit. To fulfill this particular wish, givers can skip the crowds and the checkout lines. They can skip the retail stores all together, at least for this one item, by ordering it through Kylie Jenner's direct-to-consumer online channel.

Do you take your online privacy seriously? Most people don't. They have an ideal scenario of just how private their online activities should be, but they rarely do anything to actually achieve it. The problem is that bad actors know and rely on this fact, and that's why there's been a steady rise in identity theft cases from 2013 to 2017, often resulting in loss of reputation or financial woes.

We rely on our phones to process and store reams of personal digital data. Our digital activities -- from checking bank balances to paying for a product with a tap of the screen, to sending friends and family messages over social media, to accessing work emails remotely -- have turned our phones into a goldmine of personal information. How secure is your mobile device?

In the last decade or so, the inability or unwillingness to adapt has caused many businesses to succumb to a newer, more innovative company, or one that has re-thought how to do business in the digital age. For example, people who can remember browsing the aisles of Borders likely understand the irony of one of Amazon's first moves into the brick-and-mortar realm: book stores.