Link Magazine 19 - SCLG

48 Special Reportsolutions enable thecompanies to respond to arapidly changing market placethrough enhanced speed andflexibility. An effective retailsolution delivers economicvalue to the whole business,from in-store operations tocorporate strategy to supplychain and logisticalmanagement. It helps thebusiness to coordinate itspeople, processes andtechnology to make its retailbusiness more profitable.Dubai Duty Free, world’s thirdlargest airport retailer, forexample, has employed retailwarehouse management systemto streamline the movement ofmerchandise and data.According to Colm McLoughlin,Managing Director, Dubai DutyFree, “Delivering uninterruptedgrowth has been an importantpart of our success and using thepower of technology has been akey element of this success.”The three major trends in thisrapidly growing sector are –the dominance of packagesolutions; the focus on supplychain optimization, and thedrive towards IT-BPOintegration. Ashish Panjabi,COO, Jacky’s Electronics,raises an important issuewhile discussing the scope forenhanced IT utilization in theretail supply chain. “There arestill probably too manyparallel systems which runwithin retail. The problem isthat most renowned ERPvendors have very poor retailsolutions so it meanscompanies are investing in aseparate retail solution to runalongside ERP system. Froman IT point of view, itcomplicates the matterbecause one has to link thesesystems together, run twoseparate databases, and worryabout upgrading one systemand not the other.” Toovercome such possiblecomplications, companies areon a constant quest to findbetter technology. Forinstance, a report by Frost andSullivan says the retail-specificmarket for RFID alone willgrow from $400 million in 2004to almost $4.2 billion in 2011.Following a boom in onlineretail, internet retailers havescrambled to promote e-logistics networks to overcomethe gap between consumerdemands and logisticsoffering. In online retailcompetition is just a click awayso to retain customers it isimportant to upgrade thetechnology from time to timeto keep pace with the changingtrends. “Since we started ouronline operations, we have reworkedour online presence afew times wherein today it isfully integrated in ourERP system. That meansfunctions like price updatesand order processing are allinterlinked between the ERPsystem and the website,”points out Panjabi.According to him, with mostbanks becoming liberal in thelast few years, the region hasseen an explosion in terms ofthe number of credit cards thatpeople now have. But stillpeople are sceptical overgiving out their credit cardnumbers for shopping online.This is perhaps the biggestchallenge online retailers arefacing today.Future trendsAs supply chain logistics getsincreasingly sophisticated andtechnology-induced, it hasbegan to directly impact theway companies approachtheir business. Researchershave pointed out tocollaborative supply networkstructures as a neworganization form, usingterms such as ExtendedEnterprise, VirtualCorporation and NextGeneration ManufacturingSystem to describe them.The rapid progress intechnology notwithstanding,future challenges remain. Forinstance, the success of ITinitiatives in supply chainsdepends primarily on theskills of the human resources.On the one hand it reduceshuman intervention andon the other it demandsincreased skill from personnel.Thus a strong humanresources base and constantexposure to emergingtechnology are criticalcomponents for success. “Theroles are becoming muchmore IT-specific wherecandidates are required to beinventive and re-engineer thesupply chain process,” pointsout Tracey Wynn, SeniorConsultant, SCM& LogisticsBusiness Support, KershawLeonard. However, in thewords of D’souza, one of thekey issues is the absence ofuniform best practices andperformance indicators acrossthe logistics value chain.Organizations differ in theirobjective efficiency levels andaccordingly resource allocationfor IT support can vary.While companies get to workon further refining the role ofIT in supply chain logistics, thefact remains that technologyhas immensely enriched theprocess and benefited endusers in both B2B and B2Cframeworks. And customersaren’t complaining.The Supply Chain & Logistics Group | www.sclgme.org