Jerry Edmunds, Retail Industry Director, APAC, JDA Software in discussion with Biztech2.0 outlines the changes that the entry of non-traditional retailers has brought to the Indian retail environment.

How does the entry of non-traditional enterprises into the retail fray change the equation as a technology vendor?

One of the biggest challenges is that these companies are not familiar with retailing and thus we as vendors have to be a little more diligent in extracting the information that we need in order to make the right solution choices for them and help these enterprises make the right technology decisions.

JDA is very familiar with large deployments of systems thus the Indian market is definitely a new avenue of growth for us. This is due to the fact that India is jumping from the 10 to 30 store market into the 400 to 500 store market or larger.

In what way does technology adoption vary across the board, from large to small retailers?

What is interesting is that regardless of size the technology requirements across the board are very similar. The size of the retailer doesn’t determine the type of technology that they deploy. The technology deployed depends upon who, in the organisation, holds the purse strings and also on whether the decision is IT driven or business driven. The mindset of the management generally decides what part IT has to play in the bigger picture.

In terms of technology adoption and IT sophistication how does the Indian retail environment compare with setups abroad?

I think that Indian retailers are much more open to technology but are also less patient and want technological changes to occur faster. Most western retailers tend to take things a little slower where technology is concerned and are more traditional in their approach.

In India, just by the virtue of the Indian economy growing so fast, they want to leapfrog. They are not interested in taking baby steps, but instead want to jump right into the fray.

What are some of the technologies being bought most by retailers today?

This again depends upon which of the two tiers the enterprise belongs to. The Tier 1 retailers are looking for a core solution replacement, or in certain cases are looking to setup a completely new system. These companies looking for new systems have never been in retail before and do not have any existing infrastructure. Thus they require solutions to manage the entire gamut of retail operations. But we are seeing the most activity around optimisation in this space.

What is JDA’s focus in the Indian retail market?

We have two main focuses. The first being the Tier 1 retailers who may or may not have JDA’s core set of products including the merchandising and point-of-sale (POS) systems. This is where we talk about optimisation. "Doing more with what they already have" seems to be the motto for this segment. This includes being able to help these larger retailers with their provisioning requirements and making sure that each store is merchandised by location within the country or across multiple countries.

The second area of focus lies in the Tier 2 world where we pretty much are a one-stop-shop. We have solutions to handle all Tier 2 retailer requirements right from purchasing and acquisition of products all the way through to the warehousing, distribution to stores, running through the POS systems, replenishment and pricing management and right down to communication and collaboration with vendors.

What are some of the emerging trends in retail IT?

Enterprises finally understand what they want to do with the enormous amount of data they possess. For many years, the mantra was "Information, Information, Information". Every retailer wanted all the information they could get their hands on.

Now I think enterprises, although still grappling with the challenge of what to do with the data, are getting to the point where they know what they want their retail technology to achieve, and which direction they want to go with it.