ITs all about Creating an Unmatched Experience

The Retail fever gripped India in 2000 but the automation process started
only a couple of years back.

The Indian retail industry never had it so good. From the traditional
neighbourhood kirana stores, we have grown to large hypermarts and supermarts
where the customer can choose from a wide variety of goods all under a single
roof. Today, retail is one of the largest industries in India, accounting for
over 10% of the Indian GDP and more than 8% employment. Industry analysts say
that it is on a high growth trajectory with a projected $453 billion potential
by 2011, fuelled by the Government of Indias increasing focus on achieving
higher GDP growth, and the increasing consumer income level and aspirations.
With such a huge demand and an operations-intensive supply side, Indian
retailers are gradually realizing the power of technology as a key growth
enabler.

The retail fever gripped India in 2000 but the automation process started
only a couple of years back. The main reason for technology laggardness was the
lack of scale. The industry was nascent, share of organized retail was a
miniscule percentage of the total market base and the retailers were still
experimenting. As the industry grew in leaps and bounds, the high performance
companies started rethinking the fundamental business processes and strategies
that can be enabled by technology. Technology can benefit business in more ways
than one as it helps in collaborating real time data, data analysis, inventory
and merchandising management and reduction in processing and warehousing costs.

Amit Mukherjee, group CIO RPG Enterprises

Business Imperatives

One has to start looking at the business imperatives; how do I understand my
consumer better and create a shopping experience which is superior than
competition; tailor make solutions which fit in well with their consumption
basket and implement shelf-centric supply chain processes so that the right
product is available at the right time at the right place. A lean and agile
retail processes would be able to enable all this. This would again imply
end-to-end process integration and creating adaptive technology capability
(which would then reduce data transshipment, leading to lowering of total cost
of ownership and yet be agile enough to change whenever business demands). Given
this, the question that arises is that how does all of this translate to a
technology solution architecture.

The retail system architecture has two main pillars: POS Point of sale
solution for billing the customer; and Back end integrated transactional
systemAn integrated application that cuts across functions and geographies and
cater to processes from merchandize planning to account payables.

Technology is also used to reduce cost, improve process performance and
customer service levels. Some of the typical examples can be automating
warehouse operations, mobile POS machines, electronic shelf labeling, and the
like.

Efficiencies in supply chain will finally determine which retailers will
succeed in the long term. The industry is however nascent and so are the
incumbents who are struggling to establish quality control measures,
technologically-driven shelf-centric supply chain processes. But we are learning
on ground and it is a matter of time when optimizations and efficiencies are
built into the system.

As told to Stuti Das

maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in