04 EDITOR’SCOMMENT
RETAILTECHNOLOGY
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Supporting “business as usual” T
he recent civil unrest in UK cities serves as a reminder, as if we needed it, of how challenging the environment is in which
retailers must currently operate. As an ongoing economic climate fuels weak consumer demand and supply chain volatility erodes margins, the last thing the UK retail industry needed was lost sales and clean-up costs. Figures from Kelkoo, produced by the Centre
for Retail Research (CRR), estimated that the recent unrest has already cost UK retailers £80 million in lost sales due to early store closures and consumers avoiding the chaos of city centres across the country.
This is in addition to the clean-up bill, which is estimated to be £61 million to date. In total, retailers and insurers are faced with a total bill of £141 million following four days of High Street chaos, or £35.2 million per day. Chris Simpson, Kelkoo chief marketing offi cer, commented that UK retailers are sadly going to feel the fallout of this week’s riots for several months to come. “This comes at a time when retailers are
already struggling to stay afl oat with sales up by just 0.6% on July 2010,” Simpson said. “Despite a small move in the right direction, I expect this could be a very different picture in the coming months as consumers confi dence has taken a turn for the worst.” With growth forecasts that also make for grim
reading, it may seem diffi cult for the industry to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But there is. And never before do I think retailers have had a better time to realise how important technology has become to their survival – not just for maximising growth and effi ciencies, but also for maintaining business as usual. While the High Street struggled, online only
or multichannel retailers could at least take some comfort from the fact that British shoppers have spent £31.5 billion online during the fi rst six months of 2011. This represented a signifi cant 19% increase on the same period last year and was 1% ahead of the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index growth forecast back in January. So while the clean-up costs in one channel
Member of the Audit Bureau of Circulations 7,092 Jan 10 – Dec 10
ISSN No 1359-0146
may have to be paid for from profi ts made online, it increasingly pays to take a multichannel approach to retailing – at least then it is possible to ensure one store can stay permanently open, despite High Street disruptions. Yet, here too, lessons learned from maintaining
website availability and security could be applied to the more general business continuity and
disaster recovery strategies that are needed to keep warehouses, distribution, fulfi lment and call centres running as well. After all, if your web shop front is open for business, customers will expect your non-store service and support systems to be fully operational too. This is where IT communications and
networking can facilitate mobile or remote access to central customer, supply and sales systems, so management can mitigate the damage of disruptions in any channel while keeping the day- to-day back offi ce business running. Many of the retailers in our annual ‘Communications’ feature (page 29) are updating their infrastructures to support greater productivity, effi ciency and agility in this way. However, with the Olympics now less than
a year away, businesses cannot afford to ignore their physical retail presence. Although they may be more concerned with replacing looted stock and broken windows at the moment, perhaps it will provide an opportunity to update their electronic point-of-sale (EPoS) till estates and stores. In this context, I hope some of the implementation examples in the annual ‘EPoS, digital signage and instore technology’ feature (page 16) will inspire Retail Technology readers to maximise their return on investment in the bricks-and-mortar customer experience.
Miya Knights Editor
mknights@bpl-business.com
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