"Mobility is a disruptive technology for all businesses in all industries"

Can you throw some insights on your recent market study on the state of the retail sector?

Our study revealed the main IT systems priorities for retailers today. The starting point however deserves special attention since it is the confirmation of a key reality, which is the importance of the physical stores despite the so much talked about rapid growth of online retail. The study confirms that in retail physical stores will continue to be the main driver of sales in the coming years and this has an enormous influence over the retailers’ IT decisions. In India for example the study revealed that 98% of total retail sales would be still generated in traditional physical stores by the year 2018.

The second main conclusion is a positive trend change in regards to IT investment. Retailers in leading markets plan to increase their IT budgets both at the corporate and stores level. We expect this trend to be observed in many other markets as well. If the trend is confirmed this shall be a very positive signal of economic recovery after several years of economic slowdown.

If we go into a bit more detail mobility, cloud and cross-channel are clearly identified as three of the top IT priorities from a global perspective. Cross-channel in particular, or the other buzz word today omni-channel , demands new systems that provide a seamless shopping experience and actionable insights across all channels. This results in a higher adoption of mobile POS systems in the physical stores and the need of better analytics capabilities. Lack of proper analytics is considered by 71% of retailers as one of the main reasons of a low cross-channel adoption.

Our customer experiences in India confirm the observed trends in our study with a growing interest in new store solutions and a progressive integration of the online channel. Affordability is a key aspect for Indian retailers and here clearly our subscription based pricing and the open source affordability are seen as big benefits. In case of brick-and-mortar retailers they also value a lot the fact that despite of being a full web POS it also supports offline operations, which is critical to ensure uninterrupted sales in case of a connectivity loss.

Our reaction in front of these conclusions can’t be more positive especially thinking on the confirmation of the continued importance of physical stores. It confirms our strategic decision to invest in retail and especially put priority on a strong store solution that can help retailers succeed in today’s and for future industry challenges. In fact our POS solution today is still quite unique in the market and no other solution exists with the same level of functionality combined with full web and mobile capabilities.

The fact that this reality is even more apparent in markets like India also allows us to see the future with more optimism since it is already one of our key target geographies. Customers like Decathlon Sports India clearly help us to demonstrate our value for the Indian retailers.

Can you give a sense about Openbravo Commerce platform?

The Openbravo Commerce Platform provides retailers with an unmatchable combination of a state-of-the-art commerce solution developed on top of a flexible and easily extendible development platform, mobile, web and cloud-ready with broad horizontal ERP functionality embedded, including Merchandise Management, Supply Chain Management, Multichannel Management and Enterprise Management.

Key Merchandise Management features include flexible product and assortment management capabilities and a powerful pricing and discounts engine that allow to manage efficiently a huge number of products and assortments and complex pricing schemas and promotions that allow to target customers more efficiently.

Key Supply Chain Management features include the whole purchasing process management from requisitions to invoicing and a comprehensive inventory management functionality that can also be used from mobile devices.

Key Multichannel features are provided at the stores by a modern and stylish full web and mobile POS with a fully transactional support that enables to provide an assisted sale everywhere in the store and helps to achieve higher flexibility by allowing to easily add and remove terminals adapted to demand requirements. It also integrates seamlessly with existing E-Commerce platforms like Magento through existing connectors.

Key Enterprise Management features include financials management and support to customer relationship management and human resources management. International operations are supported by multi-language, multi-currency and multi-accounting schemas capabilities.

The solution also provides a powerful embedded analytics engine to make smarter decisions based on actionable insights across the enterprise and all channels.

All the standard functionality can be easily extended with additional modules developed by Openbravo or its partners that can be easily installed and maintained.

How can mobile technologies help retailers improve operations?

Mobility is a disruptive technology for all businesses in all industries, which is transforming how businesses operate. For retailers in particular and in combination with other technologies such as Cloud it allows to react faster and be more flexible to succeed in today’s super-empowered consumers age.

Applications of mobility in retail are wide and varied but retailers invest in mobility mainly to enhance the customer experience and to improve business efficiency. And the retail area that is more benefited from mobility is the store operation where mobility is penetrating deeply into the critical realms of shopper experience and customer satisfaction.

Store operations are optimized in different ways thanks to mobility. Customer service and engagement are highly improved by allowing an assisted and interactive sale everywhere in the store which we can see is considered very important and differentiating for specialty retailers like in fashion or electronics. Line busting during peak periods is another way retailers can improve their service resulting very often in a saved sale.

The use of mobile devices in the stores is considered today as a way to progress in omni-channel, which is a key priority for retailers worldwide. The ability to check the available stock in other stores is one of the features that help to provide a superb customer service when available in the terminal.

Backoffice store operations can be also benefited by the use of mobility especially in the inventory management area. Inventory counts or stock movements such as goods receipts or goods shipments when directly executed from mobile devices provide higher accuracy and time savings. Combined with mobile alerts for different events such as replenishment needs or manager approvals for urgent actions, retailers gain higher agility and efficiency for their operations. Same capabilities can be also used in central warehouses out of the physical stores therefore globally improving the whole supply chain management performance.

A mobile point of sale solution also provides higher business agility and helps to reduce the total IT costs. Terminals can be easily added or removed adapted to the existing demand, which is critical in front of common stationary situations. Same flexibility allows opening stores faster since it simplifies a lot the required IT infrastructure. Higher flexibility is still provided when combining mobile and web technologies since only a browser is required on each mobile terminal, which dramatically simplifies the way it is deployed and maintained. And by using consumer devices like tablets or smartphones it helps to reduce the total hardware cost in comparison to the traditional POS stations.

In our case, the Openbravo Commerce Platform helps retailers to leverage mobility in both Store and Backoffice operations. Our powerful mobile and web POS becomes the perfect solution for the stores while mobile warehouse and inventory functionality help also to improve the efficiency of the backoffice operations.

What do you think are the reasons for slow online sales in the emerging markets?

As our study revealed, the level of Internet adoption as well as other culture or buyer profile characteristics are the most important reasons.

The situation in these countries we see that is significantly influenced by the type of existing policies and the culture of the consumer. Significantly increase the online retail requires greater penetration of internet usage, which in turn requires policies that encourage greater investment by telecommunications operators, especially in remote areas of major cities. In the case of infrastructure, investments for its construction and maintenance, are essential for the development of logistics service quality, which in this case also require legislation to facilitate access to financing companies often familiar, having limited geographical coverage, so that they can extend its radius of action and can for example invest in technology to improve their operations.

It is also necessary a legislation that facilitates the opening of online business and also the entry of foreign companies in this market, which is not always easy. For example in India we see the current situation in regards to FDI in Retail.

There are also other cultural or personal financial capacity issues. Cases such a strong tradition of cash, which is often due to the lack of access to credit but also distrust in online payment, which is one of the main arguments even in developed countries for a low purchase. For example, in Mexico in the study of e-commerce AMIPCI 2013, security was the number one factor behind low online sales, including factors such as the fear of delivering banking and personal data.

In this case the government's efforts should focus on encouraging banks to offer credit on better terms, the use of safe technologies and appropriate education to consumers to increase their confidence. Some retailers are already offering the ability to purchase online and pick up in store with cash, which tries to overcome resistance from buyers at this point.

What is clear is that the solution to most factors in these countries does not appear immediately, because it requires a significant investment and implementation of new regulations, which certainly makes understand why offline sales continue to dominate sales in these.

If we talk about emerging countries, China clearly is ahead not only in this group but worldwide, and has been in 2014 a world leader in terms of total online sales to $ 315.37 billion, and occupying second place in terms of percentage of sales to total online sales, at 10.1%, just behind the United Kingdom as a recent study by eMarketer has revealed. If you look at other emerging countries the gap with China is huge, obviously largely due to population in China. In total sales, Russia and Brazil are among the top 10, while in terms of percentage, other emerging countries start appearing from position 15. For example India appears at position 21 in 2014 with only 0.7% of online sales to total sales, which will double to 1,4% in 2018.

How do you see the B2B market panning out in India?

In terms of the market maturity, India has always taken a leading step towards this market space. B2C has come rather late in India but in terms of exploring the B2B market space, India has always been ahead of other countries. For example, indiamart made a profit in early 2000 where most of the dot com companies failed to make a mark.

B2B has changed the buying pattern of people. This started in the late 90s and India was never behind during this time. The fact that B2B market space was larger than the B2C market space took time for people to realize. There were new challenges for the marketers in terms of delivering and communication of value, handling complex decision-making processes and establishing long-term relationship with the buyers.

But the issues were more or less well managed when large organizations like TATA came out with metaljunction.com. It has rarely happened that the largest organization of the country took the lead to change the consuming pattern in India. In rest of the world, even for the largest B2B market space of the globe, alibaba.com, this concept was started by amateurs.

The challenges faced by the Indian B2B industry are no different from what it is in the global scenario. Web portals like metaljunction.com have become new market spaces for buyers and sellers. However what becomes the biggest challenge is finding the right marketing mix, the pricing policy and the supply chain management, which needs to be made extremely different from the conventional way of go to market strategy.

India has never been a pioneer in developing products. I believe the key reason is the lack of focus on research. The B2B market space has not been explored to even 10% of its potential to date. India is and will always have the potential to be a B2B leader backed by the sheer fact of its population and huge consumers. The only thing can happen from here is growth.

Market outlook for 2015?

We see 2015 with optimism and we expect an important growth globally in terms of new partners and new customers.

In India and in Retail in particular we expect an important growth with a lot of companies seeking for a new solution that help them succeed with the new industry challenges. We count for this with a local Openbravo team to support our local partners that will help us to increase the list of current customers in different industries, like Decathlon Sports India, Federal Bank, Hisar Metals, Quick Heal and Esmech.

For 2015 we have planned for ambitious channel growth by increasing the number of partners in the country. In this effort we focus primarily on attracting companies with demonstrated experience in the ERP market in general and in the Retail industry in particular. Those companies generally are already distributors of other legacy solutions yet feel the market pressure that pushes them to further improve their offering by adding the Openbravo solutions to their product and services portfolio.