Indian retail market is bringing in a radical change on government policy, which encourages retailers to enter Indian market with 100% FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) investment for multi brand retail. It will help top retailers in the world to enter the $400 billion retail market which is estimated to be $800 billion by 2015 according to BMI India report. In fact, India has topped AT Kearney’s annual GRDI (Global Retail Development Index) for the third year in a row as the most attractive market for retail investment. Rapid growth of retail industry is phenomenal, creating a need for good retail management systems.
Retail industry is facing the heat of high input cost, real estate price and competition, which is eroding the profits. Retailers are finding ways to reduce costs by controlling inventory, stock and pilferage. Retail operations have improved to a different level by using analytical based software which can provide insights on sales, inventory, suppliers and customers. Advanced retail analytical software incorporates a wide range of features like reporting, analysis, dashboard, alerting and monitoring.
The expansions of retailers are large enough for human resources to handle all the operation without help of tools. Retailers have introduced ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software which helps them in gathering more insights to retail operation from the data captured from various devices like POS (Point of Sale), security cameras and barcode readers. The software helps retailers to keep many aspects of business under control. Research reveals that proper adoption of correct technology can attract new customers, enhance profitability and improve overall quality of business management.
Software for analyzing the data and providing actionable insights has become a part of retail operation. With more international players in the market, new techniques which are commonly used in advanced markets like US and Europe are introduced to the market. Advanced software includes modern techniques like Price, Promotion, Store Space (Shelf) optimizations, Cluster, Markdown, Market Basket analysis, Demand Forecasting, Sales Channel Management and Customer Profiling. All these analysis are helping the decision makers to develop strategy to increase sales and reduce cost. India is an emerging market for analytical based software which can provide solutions to retailers for accurate decision making.
Trend in the retail software industry has moved towards software with advanced techniques which can help all stake holders in retail operations. With timely and accurate reports which help retailers in carrying the operations and formalizing strategy, analytics has become part of the day to day activity.
Enough information is passed from management to operations heads to category heads with relevant information according to their responsibilities. In retail operations automated process can help in a major way since the scale of operations are high. It eliminates manual way of doing complicated tasks and minimizes the errors.
IT spending in retail has increased with a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 6-7% from 2006-2010. Introduction of new technologies like RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) and self checkout systems are the future of retail. Due to advancement of technology more data are being captured and these data are being used by advanced software to give meaningful insights to the stake holders. Indian retail is growing along with software for retail industry. Global retailers are entering Indian market with more technology advanced software and Indian players are moving towards advanced software to compete with their global counterparts. Since 10% of retail industry is organised, there is room for all the existing and global players to capture the market. Success of large software services companies planning to enter Indian market depends on their adaptation to Indian retail market conditions. They have an upper hand in advanced mathematical techniques used in their software. Both foreign and local players are competing for their pie in the retail market, the support factors like infrastructure will also have an upper hand in the expansion of market share. Consider getting your Indian visas today to get the opportunity.
