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IT in Retail-Exploring New Frontiers

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DQI Bureau
New Update

The retailing environment in India is about to explode.

What started off a few years ago as a small attempt to wean the Indian homemaker

from the corner store and the vegetable market, entered the well-lit, integrated

shopping experiences provided by a Shoppers Stop or a Foodworld. It has suddenly

become a phenomenon that is transforming the landscape of over a hundred cities

and towns. This has raised the expectations of the consumers in terms of bargain

and quality shopping. And Reliance is making news with its hiring of million

dollar salaried professionals to power its own mega ventures. And global majors

such as Tesco and Walmart are waiting in the wings for their place under the

Indian sun. Let's take a look at global trends in retail and their impact on

Indian retail.

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The three dominant trends in the deployment of IT in this

fast growing industry are-the dominance of package solutions, the focus on

supply chain optimization, and the new drive towards IT-BPO integration.

The legendary success of Walmart has been attributed by

industry pundits in their ability to procure, warehouse, distribute, and display

merchandise at a speed and price point that is unmatched by any of their

competitors.

The vision of their management has enabled them to set

processes in place to embrace each one of their supply chain partners in a

framework of supply optimisation and cost management that creates multiple

winner.

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The true evidence of transformational outsourcing is the

ability to seamlessly integrate the applications development, support and

processing. This is happening at a time when offshoring, nearshoring and the EDS

terminology of bestshoring have caught the imagination of CEOs worldwide. And

such an integration of IT and BPO has been quickly incorporated by many

retailers in the US and Europe. Global retailers in partnership are now tackling

merchandise management, warehouse space optimisation, logistics and a host of

other areas with their local and global vendors. This is driving more cost

reduction and value creation growth through innovative new approaches.

The

dominance of package solutions is the most predictable for an industry

How can the great retail revolution in India benefit from

the “best-in-class” experiences of their global brethren? The opportunity is

clearly huge-for retailers to think through their entire process and expansion

strategy in the context of available Information Technology and Business Process

Optimisation and Outsourcing solutions. For the Indian IT and BPO community this

industry presents one of the best opportunities to showcase capabilities in the

domestic market as well as with global customers. There is no shortage of

opportunity and profits in developing and implementing world-class solutions in

the local marketplace in this industry. This is an industry where not just the

contextual functions such as accounting and human resource management but also

core functions — buying, merchandising, property management, marketing, and

loyalty management are becoming candidates for transformational outsourcing and

many retailers have put in place advanced strategies for outsourcing and

co-sourcing these applications with savvy partners in their countries as well as

offshore. And if Indian retailers learn from their global counterparts and

integrate transformational outsourcing into their growth strategies, they can

hit the ground running with customer and cost management models that are truly

world class.

Finally the case for IT in Retail becomes even stronger

when one looks at the pedigree of today's Retail czars. They are a bunch of IT

savvy folks who know how to use the power of IT to extract the maximum juice

from their shelves and their customers-Rajeev Karwal, BS Nagesh and now Raghu

Pillai who was himself in the IT industry a decade ago and has now moved through

RPG Retail to Pantaloon to Reliance. With stalwarts like Raghu at the forefront

of the Retail revolution, this is one industry where world class IT will surely

be deployed to make the difference!

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