Retail and Hospitality

Multi-channel increasingly crucial

7 May 2008

Torex, a global provider of solutions to the retail marketplace, has joined forces with Martec International to publish the 2008/9 UK IT in Retail Report. Now in its sixth year, the report provides a comprehensive guide to IT investment trends among the UK’s largest retailers.

The IT in Retail Report is based on research carried out with the UK’s 100 leading retailers, which together represent 76 per cent of the UK retail sector, with annual sales of £170 billion and 50,000 stores.

Key findings of the report include:

• Store systems remain the main investment priority for retailers followed by merchandising systems and website and e-commerce systems
• Multi-channel retailing is of growing importance to UK retailers. The majority (68 per cent) now have a transactional web site and 91 per cent expect non-store sales to increase
• Mobile technology is a rapidly growing area of investment with the majority (56 per cent) using or planning to use this technology to improve store productivity
• There is an increase in outsourcing in most applications with website, marketing, B2B and data warehousing leading the way
• Overall there is little growth in IT spend with retailers trying to do more for the same money.

“This report makes it clear that technology plays a vital role as retailers automate more of their processes and strive to create compelling multi-channel environments,” said Doug Hargrove, chief marketing officer at Torex. “Applications such as POS, merchandise management, financials and human resources are now considered vital to the running of a retail business. Other types of technology, such as mobile, marketing and e-procurement systems are rapidly gaining acceptance as they also prove to deliver operational efficiencies and an enhanced customer experience.”

“Martec is committed to helping retailers achieve significant benefits from technology investments,” said Brian Hume, managing director of Martec. “We hope that the findings of this report will encourage technology providers to align their solutions with retailers’ demands, to keep their customers satisfied and drive forward innovation in the overall retail sector.”