IT issues in F&B retail in India

Some of the points which I discussed in a recent feedback on Indian retail....

For a F&B retailer, what are the typical pain areas of operations -- for instance, SKU management, inventory tracking, billing, analysing shopper data or others?

Typical technology pain areas include – localization requirements like multiple MRP’s, SKU rationalization – EAN/UPC codes, batch controls, forecasting of different types of categories since we are a hypermarket chain with a wide assortment. Vendor collaboration is a big pain area as most of our vendors fall in the medium to small range with low process maturity. We need to educate our vendors and bring their process maturity to an acceptable standard which would make our operations more efficient. Other major pain is the unreliable telecommunication infrastructure where we struggle to get consistent service levels from our telecom vendors. Lack of trained manpower in operations who are exposed to best of breed retail processes. This hampers us from utilizing the enterprise application to its fullest potential.

Are technology firms well versed with the specific needs of a retail operation? Is there sufficient understanding of the business of retail? Are there any specific concerns that you would want a tech company to address (areas they currently do not address)?

Indian service providers generally are tuned to develop software as per given specifications by their overseas clients, they are not used to design or develop innovative solutions as per business requirements. They do not have sufficient domain knowledge consultants or do not understand the importance of domain knowledge in requirement analysis leading to mismatch of expectations in the execution of the projects. To address the local market this needs to change and tech companies in India need to give sufficient importance to consultants who understand the domain and the technology and act as the interface between the business and technology teams. Indian tech companies need to understand that technology is just a tool and it’s the ultimate business objective which needs to be fulfilled with acceptable price points. Retail business is tough with minimal margins so the technology companies needs to employ innovative methods to keep the investments low and in return giving measurable business benefits. Only companies which would provide value would survive in the Indian market. 

Which are the areas of operation that are completely or partially technology-enabled? E.g Point-of-Sale (POS), ERP, Workforce Management, Retail Media Networks, SKU-level RFID tagging, GDS, CRM etc etc

Our operations are completely technology enabled in the following areas:

• In store operations – (POS, Direct Store Deliveries (DSD), Price and promotion management,  payroll, Loyalty (Group Loyalty and CRM).
• Supply Chain and Merchandise Management, Warehouse Management, Vendor Management
• Core ERP implemented for Financial Management (AP,AR,GL), Fixed Asset Management etc.
• Human Resource Management System (HRMS)

All systems are integrated.

Currently we do not have any plans for RFID especially at SKU level, as we do not think this currently makes business sense to go in for this investment. Our focus is on operational efficiency and we would thus stress more the analytics, as now we have a base application in place giving us the fodder to now focus on using the data converting into meaningful information.