IT Transformation for the Retail Industry

Today's retailers need to transform their IT capabilities for a number of reasons. These include:

• To aggregate and analyze customer data to enhance differentiation.
  
  
• To increase a company's ability to respond to a rapidly changing marketplace through enhanced flexibility and speed.
  
  
• To operate effectively, retailers need to have one system working across stores (sometimes across national borders) to ensure the most effective use of stock and to support optimized business processes.
  
  

As the hype around technology decreases, retailers are seeing clearly that technology's role is one of an enabler, speeding up of processes and delivering cost savings. The retail industry faces specific IT management challenges:

• Transparency and Tracking: Retailers need greater transparency between systems and better tracking to integrate systems from manufacturer through to consumer to obtain customer and sales information.
  
  
• Customer Data: Information overload is a challenge for retailers because they need to collect and sift through data to convert it into useful information in a customer-centric industry.
  
  
• Global Data Synchronization: Enabled by radio frequency identification/electronic product coding, the entire supply chain is becoming more intelligent. This creates what Accenture calls Silent Commerce. Benefits for retailers include enabling the use of real-time data to monitor inventory levels. Radio frequency identification tagging also positions the company to better safeguard its shipments by enabling the tracking of products from manufacturer through the supply chain.
  
  

Accenture collaborates with companies to meet the need for positive IT management. The goal is to enhance business processes and keep up to date with innovation to become a high-performance business.

Accenture has the experience, insight and acumen to help companies in the retail industry transform to achieve high performance, creating the ability to overcome its specific challenges.

Accenture has a track record in helping companies use technology to improve business performance. Our practitioners are experienced in bold, value-creating approaches to IT. We bring boardroom-relevant criteria to IT investments and help aspiring high-performance businesses to "think bigger" about IT's ability to improve operating results.

For companies wishing to begin or continue along the journey toward high performance, Accenture has a unique mix of capabilities that make us the perfect partner:

• Deep Industry Insight: We have been working in this industry for years and have a track record of helping retail companies around the world enhance performance.
  
  
• The Right People: We have an understanding of the capabilities necessary to be successful as well as the experience. As the world's largest management consultancy, with a vast pool of business talent, nobody else can better help companies innovate intelligently to create competitive advantage.
  
  
• Global Reach: Accenture's global presence means we can leverage local insight like nobody else. And the Accenture Global Delivery Network means that retail companies can leverage the skill and cost benefits of global sourcing, adding scalability and flexibility to their business processes.
  
  
• Technological Excellence: The capabilities enabling high performance are increasingly enabled by technology. From innovation to what works, nobody understands how to use technology to better business advantage than Accenture—and we have the global capability to manage technology cost-effectively at higher service levels.
  
  

Accenture is committed to partnering with you on your company's journey toward high performance, helping you achieve your strategic goals in the most effective manner possible.

What Our Clients have to Say
"We had a vision to embrace the challenge of building a worldwide company...truly global in vision, leveraging each country's experience as we optimize our resources and our technology. We turned to Accenture to help make this vision a reality—their involvement was critical to the program's success."—Sergio F. Dias, Carrefour Group Controller.

Contact us to discuss how Accenture can help you understand high performance in the Retail industry.