04 EDITOR’SCOMMENT
RETAILTECHNOLOGY
Editor
Miya Knights
mknights@bpl-business.com
t: 07810 648 706
Publisher
Clare Sturzaker
csturzaker@bpl-business.com
t: 01342 717459
Consultant Editor
Chris Field
eld@retailtechnology.co.uk t: 01435 873 377
Sales
Lynn Neil
lneil@bpl-business.com
t: 0208 123 5040
Chairman
Chris Boeree
cboeree@bpl-business.com
Design
Whitewater GFX
admin@whitewatergfx.co.uk
t: 08452 998596
circ@wdis.co.uk
t: 0208 606 7300
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IT helps retail adapt to change
W
elcome to the March/April issue of Retail Technology magazine.
Having been going for over 23 years now,
Member of the Audit Bureau of Circulations 6,641 Jan 09 – Dec 09
ISSN No 1359-0146
you’d think we’d have seen it all. But just as retailers begin gearing up for another season of selling, the amount of change they face in coming months is almost unprecedented. New or updated regulations like the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Effi ciency Scheme (see page 6), tax legislation and government are sure to continue to put retail systems and processes to almost as stringent a test as the month have in dealing with the worst global recession in modern times. The problem has been that the job of successful retailing has always been seen as rather a dark art. But now that every channel and touchpoint is dominated technology, driving paper and cashless processes, retailers must overcome any reluctance to rely evermore on technology to compliment and reinforce an ‘eye for retail’ or gut instinct. Having a granular view on customers and processes across channels was already seen as a key tenant of multichannel retailing. But now, it is essential to establishing and maintaining meaningful, two-way interactions with customers, because it’s easier to foster a loyal customer base than win back or win over new or dissatisfi ed ones. Beneath all of this focus on the customer at the most important level of any retail business, the back-offi ce processes common to any company will have a particularly important role to play, as we enter this period of economic and political change. Remaining agile enough to respond to regulatory or legislative changes to business operations will become a more strategically important measure of success, as will maintaining lean enough an operation to protect that ever-diminishing bottom line. A look through our annual ‘Retail Back-Offi ce Processes’ feature (from page 27) will reveal the trends and technologies helping to harness this agility and effi ciency for retailers already today. If customers are retail’s lifeblood and its processes are the scaffolding from which every operation hangs, then money must be its oxygen. The annual ‘Loss Prevention and Security’ feature tackles three key areas from which it draws its life breath, as it were: loss of data from computers and networks, online payment security and loss of cash and goods in stores and in the supply chain (shrinkage). While the shift to chip & PIN and inexorable growth online have created a change in the way that criminals set out to defraud retailers, the feature looks at the best ways retailer have found to
protect themselves, while still incentivising loyalty and repeat custom. We also look at the use of new developments in physical security systems including, electronic article surveillance systems (including source tagging), internet protocol (IP) closed circuit television (CCTV) and cash handling/management, with our usual emphasis on real-life retail implementation stories. Last but not least this month, the magazine sees the return of the ‘Outsourcing Issue’. Outsourcing has come to be seen as a way of allowing organisations to rationalise costs and concentrate on core skills, while maintaining the levels of IT functionality that most retailers have come to rely on to run their business-critical operations. But fi nancing and delivery models have also matured to offer near and offshore, as well as specialist business process and application development expertise, that can also help add value to and grow retail businesses. Retail Technology looks at how retailers can take advantage of or evolve best-practice use of outsourced offshore IT services to add extra value or innovation to their bottom line, at same time as allowing them to do more with less. One thing’s for sure, whether its streamlining the back-offi ce, protecting the bottom line or updating sourcing models for leaner operations, technology will continue to lie at the heart of many key strategic changes for retailers in 2010. And that, I reckon, should be getting retail technologists vote in coming months.
Miya Knights
Editor
mknights@bpl-business.com
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