Technology The Greatest Differentiator in the Retail Industry

Retailers and brands are embracing technology in a big way to drive a seamless user experience in an effort to blend in with the increasingly digital world and provide convenience and benefits to the consumer. Indian Retail Industry’s top CIOs and CTOs, the visionaries responsible for the technological direction any organisation takes, share their thoughts on the future of retail technology, their focus points as well as the challenges they face while implementing them...

- Sandeep Kumar & Charu Lamba:

The retail industry is competitive, it’s relentless and the success of brands and retailers depends on how firmly they deal with their competition. One way to stay ahead of the curve is the incorporation of technology in a brand’s operating model.

Technology is changing the shape of the global retail industry as also the way many retailers and businesses operate. In retail, technology gives brands the platform to better satisfy their customers by helping them concentrate on consumer needs.

According to a Walker study, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator by 2020 and 86 percent of consumers will pay more for a better experience. The challenge in serving the modern customer for most retailers, therefore, lies in bringing about the right balance between technology and humans.

Retailers with the foresight to understand the potential of technology without getting lost in its complexities, and merging it with human interaction, have always been able to grow faster and bigger. Simply put, technology is beginning to play an increasingly important role in the management of complex retail operations all over the world. To stay ahead of the game, retailers are taking the help of different technologies to lead the way in changing two aspects: their points-of-sale and their points-of supply.

As retail markets continue to grow and become complex, it is becoming increasingly tough for businesses to keep a track on new developments and then to figure out how these developments can be combined into their operating models in order to come up with a winning proposition – both for themselves as well as their consumer. This is one of the many reasons that retailers need technology.

Other important factors for retail brands to transform their IT capabilities include:

Increasing the company’s ability to respond to the evolving marketplace through enhanced speed and flexibility