04 EDITOR’SCOMMENT
RETAILTECHNOLOGY
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Technology fast-tracks retailer growth
memory, it is probably too late for New Year’s best wishes (although they are no less felt). However, it is certainly not too late for retailers to be feeling its affects.
W La Senza, Hawkin’s Bazaar, Blacks and Barratts
were just some of the retailers who have already been unable to shake their festive hangovers and gone into administration, pointing to the continued diffi cult trading climate, in which only the strongest will continue to survive. To add the UK retail industry’s woes, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) said at the beginning of February that UK retailers faced one of their worst Januarys ever. The industry body said consumers reigned in their spending after the expensive Christmas shopping season and concentrated more on paying off debt and savings spending at the time of heavy discounting during Christmas. And although the festive and January sales offered some brief respite from the tough trading conditions, heavy discounting to entice evermore value-conscious shoppers into stores moderated the uplift. As a result, the BRC reported UK retail sales
values were down 0.3% on a like-for-like basis from January 2011, when sales had risen 2.3%, picking up after December 2010’s snow disruption. Overall, sales were up 2.1%, against a 4.2% increase in January 2011. But, on both measures it was the second-worst January, after January 2010, since the survey began in 1995. Add into this mix that business rates are set to rise by 5.6% in April, and it is easy to see how current conditions could cause further casualties in the retail sector. The headline statistics and insolvencies might
make for grim reading. But they also set the backdrop against which spots of growth shine even brighter, especially when they are all enabled by the intelligent, tactical and/or strategic use of technology. In this context, perhaps unsurprisingly, the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index found e-commerce continued to be the only channel to sustain double-digit growth. E-commerce sales were up by 12.2% on November and 16.5% on December 2010, with UK shoppers spending a total of £7.9 billion online during December. This issue is full of examples of technology
Member of the Audit Bureau of Circulations 7,092 Jan 10 – Dec 10
ISSN No 1359-0146
to support e-commerce growth or, better still, its integration with other channels to drive multichannel operational and brand advantages. One such success story is John Lewis, which has ambitions to expand its already rapidly growing e-commerce presence further through
elcome to the fi rst issue of Retail Technology magazine of 2012. With the festive season fading fast into the
a deal to offer online customer personalised product recommendations (page 6). In fact, as a technology-dependent channel, online growth is driving technology investment in order to supplement stagnating domestic sales in new markets overseas. Internationalisation will emerge as a major trend into 2012, with UK success stories like Burberry (which posted 21% sales increase in the last quarter of 2011) blazing the trail for other UK retail outfi ts moving overseas, as well as the likes of Finlux from Scandinavia (page 7) arriving on UK shores. But without the right business model and processes or IT skills in place, only time will tell if such ventures end up being remembered in the same thought as Best Buy and Carphone Warehouse’s ill-fated transatlantic ventures. One thing is for certain, in order to act locally
but operate globally, retailers will need to rely on automation built into the likes workforce management (WFM) systems to manage evermore complex staffi ng arrangements, whether that’s in the store, supply chain or call centre. So, retailers thinking of setting up shop abroad it will pay to heed the best technology practices shared in our annual (WFM) supplement (page 9), brought to you through sponsor and WFM systems provider Kronos. Lastly, whatever your IT plans for 2012,
make sure you check out our annual Horizons supplement (page 15) for a guide to some of the technologies that vendors are tipping to make it big this year. Taken with the positive outlook being created by the year’s fi rst trade shows (page 8), at least the role of technology in this hard-pressed industry is proving its worth as an enabler of success for those that are willing and able to invest.
Miya Knights Editor
mknights@bpl-business.com
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