04 EDITOR’SCOMMENT


RETAILTECHNOLOGY


Editor Miya Knights e: mknights@bpl-business.com t: 07810 648 706


Publisher Clare Sturzaker e: csturzaker@bpl-business.com t: 01342 717459


Consultant Editor Chris Field e: cfi eld@retailtechnology.co.uk t: 01435 873 377


Sales Lynn Neil e: lneil@bpl-business.com t: 0208 123 5040


Chairman Chris Boeree e: cboeree@bpl-business.com


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Retail IT that moves with the times


I


noticed recently that the ‘processes data quickly’ (PDQ) terminal that has helped revolutionise the payments industry celebrated its 25th birthday late last month.


Introduced in the UK on 25 March 1986 at Brent Cross shopping centre, the PDQ terminal was the fi rst payments service to act as a single electronic plastic card terminal at point-of-sale (PoS). It enabled retailers to manage large volumes of credit card sales for the fi rst time, while paving the way to the current popularity of debit cards too. Funnily enough it also, in part, paved the way


for the launch of this very publication a little over a year later – making this March/April 2011, our 24th anniversary issue. And the similarities do not stop there. As retailers slowly discovered the economies


of operational scale all manner of technology developments could harness, there was no stopping them. And just as store IT estates and data centres grew, so did Retail Technology magazine’s coverage. But just as our good old “uninterruptable powers supplies feature” examined how retailers could protect the power supply to these ever hungrier IT resources, so Retail Technology has moved with the times to now look at the broader technology space of “sustainable IT and business processes” (May/June issue). Perhaps also without the PDQ terminal,


we’d never have so many credit or debit cards in our wallets, which now also come in handy when shopping online, over the phone or mail order. But again, here retailers have adapted their propositions to diversify into these different channels and appeal to broader customer bases. And RetailTechnology.com has been available online for the best part of decade, supported by regular e-casts, while the team even pounded the trade fl oors of the recent EuroShop and Retail Business Technology Expo events (see pages 12 and 13 for the reports).


But there the comparisons end, as a quarter of


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ISSN No 1359-0146


a century later it is still you – our readers – who have to actually work with, secure and optimise all this technology. And, while this industry will always try and tempt you with shiny new “toys” (see Innovations, pages 37 and 38), the sheer scale and complexity of both the retail technology landscape has led to two distinct, current challenges: cost and security. So this issue’s features focus on loss prevention and security, as well as outsourcing and offshoring, are timely coming at perhaps the most challenging time for retailers in decades. Thinking back to that fi rst PDQ terminal and


its fi rst transaction, who would have thought how important a factor card payment data and security


would become. According to the Payments Council, we have increased how much we spend on cards fourfold in 10 years and used them six billion times in 2010 alone. So, when loss prevention and security once meant having a security guard instore, it now spans the fraud team, CCTV, tagging and alarm systems, as well as cash management processes, right through to the loss of data from computers and networks, online payment security and compliance and the loss of cash and goods in the supply chain. And all of these are today IT dependent. So our special Loss Prevention & Security supplement (from page 14) examines the best ways retailers of all shapes and sizes have found to protect their bottom line, while still continuing to incentivise loyalty and repeat custom. Some have argued that technology will never be a core competence in retail. But I would argue that it already is. Either way, commanding up to 3.5% of a retailer’s budget, at time when everyone is having to tighten their fi nancial belts, fi nding a way to do compete more effectively with less IT investment is going to be music to their ears. So fi ttingly, the third annual look at outsourcing and offshoring delves into the ways retailers are separating strategically important internal IT processes from those that can be managed by a commodity provider, regardless of whether that provider operates out of the UK, India, Brazil, or even in “the cloud,” which just as likely nowadays. As the crucial quarterly and annual trading


fi gures start rolling in, along with a good few profi t warnings, I hope the retail IT developments and projects covered in this issue will offer some direction in the ongoing quest to wring every ounce of value out of mission-critical investments, and successfully navigate the continued challenging economic conditions deftly and safely.


Miya Knights Editor


mknights@bpl-business.com


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