One of the strong themes from the Conference was that consumers are facing increasing rates of inflation and a reduced ability or willingness to spend. With this in mind, today’s webinar sought to examine the part that technology can play in helping retailers overcome a consumer downturn.
With a technology supplier, a business and technology consultant and an IT director on the panel, it would have been easy for the talk to turn distinctly techie. Yet, what emerged most prominently from the discussion was that technology can be an excellent enabler for retailers to get the basics right.
Running tight supply chains, maximising availability of stock and setting prices so that stock sells through with the largest margins possible are all tasks that technology can assist with.
Keeping your customers happy as competitors battle for share of stalling or even shrinking markets will be crucial. Being able to access the data that is collected by your systems and then working with your IT department to use that data to gauge customers’ needs, could provide competitive advantage at a time when customers’ requirements are changing.
If the customer service in your stores is great and your staff’s product knowledge is outstanding, you can probably afford not to invest in more technology in this area. However, for most retailers, this isn’t the case.
Consumers are investing in technology that allows them to research products, pricing and service before making purchase decisions. If you don’t give your staff access to this same information, can you really blame customers for choosing to take their business elsewhere?
Using technology to enable efficiency and create sales opportunities can be costly and time-consuming. As such, any significant IT projects this year are going to require significant return on investment.
But throwing new technology at the same old problems is not the only way to get an improved return on your investment. One of the points made by the panel is that a downturn is the perfect time to re-examine how you use the technology you are already running.
So the whole business – including the IT department – needs to go back to basics if technology is going to support business through these uncertain times.
To view the webinar, click here
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