Retailing Solutions Mean Big Money

India is experiencing an unprecedented retail boom and IT vendors have
been falling over themselves to offer solutions for this emerging vertical. This
spells good news for solution providers who are always on the lookout for newer
solutions and technologies to invest in

Looks like the retail market is not just a place where all growth is
happening. It is also an area where most vendors are putting their investment
in. Giving credence to this statement is the fact that vendors like Hewlett
Packard (HP) and IBM have launched many solutions targeted at the retail
business specifically. Right now, these are the two biggest IT vendors who have
taken a plunge into retail and each is trying to woo partners from the other.

HP has launched a set of radio frequency identification (RFID) offerings for
the Indian retail market. Built on its internal RFID expertise (it has 28 sites
fully operational with RFID worldwide), HP has extended these solutions and
services to Indian customers as part of its TSG portfolio.

The new offerings designed specifically for the supply chain promise to help
retailers in ensuring proper inventory, reduce asset shrinkage and provide
supply chain visibility.

Milind Shah, Country Service Principal for Retail and Consumer Packaged
Goods, Technology Solutions Group- Sales, HP India said, “HP's expertise in RFID
is multi-faceted. It produces RFID-enabled retail goods, provides RFID
consulting and integration services, participates in global RFID standards
development, and is an early adopter of RFID in its own operations. The HP RFID
portfolio will offer RFID solutions strategy from building a business case to
pilots to help Indian customers simplify change and reduce costs.”

HP covers the entire supply chain for retail, providing retail solutions for
stores, distribution as well as on the headquarters front. On the stores front,
HP has its own POS, have store support software and has a great story in terms
of store rollouts.

For the distribution, HP has been a large system integrator (SI) partner for
RFID application, and is involved in projects of DC automation, warehouse
management and transportation solutions. On the HQ front, HP has its own servers
and storage particularly designed for the retail market, and we provide
application management and supply chain. “We also have our own retail analytics
center set-up in Bangalore,” Shah said.

Meanwhile IBM, in November 2007 unveiled store integration framework (SIF)
suite for the Indian retail sector. SIF is a middleware developed speci­fically
for retail that integrates all retailer devices, applications and solutions to
create intelligent and responsive stores. IBM's suite for the Indian retail
sector include solutions such as IBM digital video surveillance (DVS) solution;
the Integrated Multi-channel retailing solution and IBM advanced POS and any
place kiosk solution, to help Indian retailers leverage IT for greater
competitive advantage. These solutions will help Indian retailers address key
issues related to security, channel integration, and customer management helping
them boost sales, increase management efficiencies, minimize losses due to theft
and increase customer satisfaction.

For people in retaing business, sky seems to be the limit

How SPs can benefit

Vendors have made available a variety of solutions and there is a good case
for solution providers and SIs as the challenge is not with deploying the
solutions but in making a business case out of it. “In our opinion, if SIs work
towards integrating their business needs through IT, there is great value
proposition for the retailers,” Shah added.

Sharing his thoughts

on the same, Sridhar Hariharasubramanian-Business Solutions Executive, IBM
India said, “Our solution portfolio is categorized into four broad areas-total
store, supply chain and merchandising, multi-channel retailing and retail
business intelligence. Within these areas, we offer many innovative solutions
such as smart surveillance, anyplace kiosks, advanced POS and SIF.”

Retailers adopting SIF can benefit because of quicker time to value by
rapidly implementing the right underlying structure to drive efficiency and
improve the consumer experience. They can speed up future adaptation of store
environment by deploying new applications and systems more quickly, simply and
intelligently than ever before, and achieve a quicker return on investment (RoI)
for every solution brought into the stores.

A wider flexibility in terms of managing store systems to integrating
applications, retailers can leverage on the wide interoperability and skills
bases, enabled by open standards, to bring together the heterogeneous
technologies within existing environment and those that will be deployed in the
future. They must act quickly to seize new opportunities and respond dynamically
to change.

“Our solution promises a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) because it helps
to contain the cost of enhancing, adapting and operating store systems, while
protecting and extending the value of existing technologies. Equipped with an
open archite­cture, reduce the cost of acquiring, deploying supporting and
managing new technologies,” Hariharasubramanian stated.

Who should consider retail solutions

IBM business partners such as solution providers and others can join the IBM
PartnerWorld program and the IBM PartnerWorld Industry network for retail. They
can then team with IBM to complete step-by-step to validate their solution on
IBM store integration framework. The business partners can then market the SIF-ready
solution and enjoy ongoing access to IBM resources and support.

Said Shah, “HP positions itself as an end-to-end partner for its retail
customers. From products (laptops, printers, servers, storage, networking) to
services (applica­tions, rollouts, infrastructure management, data center,
con­sulting) and provide a one-stop shop to all customers. For point solutions,
like RFID and DC automation we just need to extend our learnings to our
customers, and consequently, the time to execute complicated projects very
quickly.”

Partner education

Another important focus for the vendors is educating partners about the
retail initiatives and solutions, and highlighting the benefits of the same.
According to Subramanian, the ready for IBM retail store innovations- SIF
program provides business partners with access to extensive education, technical
support and sales enablement resources, and a gateway to the vast IBM marketing
network. Through the program, IBM works with select IBM business partners to
design, test and validate retail store applications for use with IBM store
integration framework-IBM's open-standards-based, middleware optimized for store
environments.

Given the optimism about retail solutions and their benefits to partners as
well as customers, vendors are doing their bit to innovate further and bring in
new solutions to the market place. According to Shah, HP does extensive research
in its own HP labs spread across the globe. “We believe in innovation, and are
constantly striving to bring innovative solutions to our customers. We feel
innovation will be the key in retail for incremental revenue, and we are
constantly striving for the same.”

Talking in the same vein, Subramanian said, ”We are committed to continued
inno­vation. IBM has expertise and experience in the retail sector that spans
across the world for more than 50 years. IBM's innovative solutions for the
retail industry are likely to emerge from our research and focus on areas such
as SOA, Web 2.0, Second Life, social networking, mobile commerce, green
(environment-friendly) energy management initiatives.”

What this means is that retail is the way forward for most vendors and it is
for solution providers as well as retail partners to make the most of it and
grow.

Subbalakshmi BM


(subbalakshmibm@cybermedia.co.in)