Retail Technology: Barrier or an Enabler?

From omni-channel fulfilment and dynamic pricing, to customer experience and insights, IT is integral to the 21st century retail experience. It underpins both high street and online offers, ensuring they are complementary rather than competing forces. It also ensures incumbency doesn’t become a burden in competing with leaner new-market entrants.

There remains, however, business and technology challenges that retailers face regardless of size.

These challenges are brought home in a recent research report by Peru Consulting that identified three interlocking issues:

• A siloed approach to IT preventing firms from building a complete picture of customer behaviour
• The impediment of legacy systems; and
• A lack of investment in new technology to enable differentiation in a highly competitive landscape

In a world where WiFi and high speed broadband are critical to enable a new age of flexible payments systems, tablet empowered sales staff, compelling end user apps and intelligent stock management with RFID tags; one third of large retail stores say they can’t provide free WiFi to customers because of technical constraints.

To dig into the research in more detail, compare notes on its findings and share experiences on meeting the challenges, join us for this specially convened Dining Club event with a retail focus.

Peru Consulting will be our partner on the night and you will get to hear from Director David Upton. The evening will provide the opportunity to quiz David and share your own thoughts with peers on the future of retail IT. In addition, there will be a chance to discuss potential competitive solutions such as:

• Becoming ‘Cloud Smart’
• Evaluating Total Cost of Ownership in a digital environment
• Developing ‘Strategic Sourcing’
• Assessing Cloud readiness

If all of this whets your appetite, why not join us at L'Escargot for an evening of fine dining and great conversation?