Retail and Hospitality

ARC Retail Conference highlights intelligent retailing

13 November 2007

The ARC Retail Conference, recently held in London, covered aspects of supply chain management and multi-channel retailing, and featured speakers from Woolworth's, Waterstone's, Entertainment UK and two industry bodies; the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG) and the British Retail Consortium (BRC).

Kevin Hawkins, director general of the BRC spoke regarding the tendency for modern retailers to be very rich in data, but not necessarily very good at turning it into information that can be applied to driving sales and profits.

"This underlying issue has led many retailers to look at how their businesses can become 'intelligent' businesses," he said. "How can we integrate our systems and processes in a way which makes relevant information accessible to those who need it, when they need it? What we need, in essence, is an information supply chain."

Dr Phil Streatfield, commercial supply chain and IT director of Woolworths, talked about the various benefits to retailers of becoming an intelligent business. He argued that a more detailed approach to analysing information helps employees to investigate, explore and improve business performance.

"Trying to make sense of a mountain of data can lead to improvements in availability with lower levels of stock," he said. "In the past, people would argue that this can't be done, and that more merchandise on the shelves could only be achieved with more reserve stock. But with improved business intelligence and demand forecasting, we're proving such a paradox to be wrong."

Andrew McClelland of IMRG (the industry body for electronic retailing via the internet, mobile, interactive TV and kiosks) acknowledged that multi-channel integration has been a real challenge for the industry.

"Retailers have to treat multi-channel operations as simply another store, rather than a separate entity," he said. "Selling through the Internet is now regarded as a key competitive capability for all but the smallest retailers, and the need for a single integrated system is as great here as in conventional bricks and mortar retailing."