The investment in information technology is a major retailing challenge and calls for a high degree of technology understanding and a sharper focus on process and people. The Indian experience in the last couple of years has been mixed : Retailers like Shoppers' Stop undertook ambitious and expensive ERP packages, which many analysts felt was much ahead of the time, others like Westside opted for conservative IT packages, believing more in process discipline.

"In retail, property and IT are long-term investments," says Futurescape Netcom Ltd managing director Namrata Rana. "What retailers need to do first is to integrate and manage people and process and backend operations through an integrated IT platform with data warehousing capabilities, which needs to be further enhanced with CRM to ensure a smooth consistent customer experience." Futurescape provides CRM services and technology-driven solutions to retailers in alliance with Navision (a Microsoft company).

Sharing his perspective on IT investments, Trent (that manages Westside) managing director Noel N Tata said :"In India, you don't need to borrow the IT models from the West where IT substitutes for expensive manpower. Westside has spent a fraction of what other major retailers may have invested in their IT platform."

Ms Rana sees Indian retailers allocating around 5-10 percent of their revenues towards IT, especially in the sphere of supply chain, inventory management and financial management.

"From last year onwards investments in IT and retail have gone up three times," points out Ms Rana. "Retailers are fast realising that scaling up operations needs a robust infrastructure that goes beyond the point of sales systems."

Based on the projected growth strategies, IT investments vary: Shopper's Stop has spent over Rs 20 crore; north India-based lifestyle store Ebony over Rs 3 crore, and the Chennai-based Food World Rs 6 crore.

Says Ebony Retail Holdings managing director B S Narula: "Around 20 percent of the total outlays for a retail store now goes towards installing an efficient IT systems."

The investments are projected to rise as reluctant retailers discover home-grown retailing solutions and see some merit in investing in IT. Says Ms Rana, It will be interesting to note that Walmart outsources a huge amount from their IT operations in India."

Mr Narula feels that the Indian retailing is fast moving towards global trends. International retailing meanwhile is seeing investments in the area of retail and category optimisation.

Ebony, which opted for Retail Propackage, says IT has resulted in the smooth running of operations across its chain of seven stores. Retail Pro seems to have found acceptance: even Westside has adopted this problem.

Says Trent head of information technology KVS Seshasai: "The objective behind implementing RetailPro was to manage the complexity of ordering, replenishing and to know the details about all the varieties and the movement of goods as currently we have around 25,000 to 30,000 stock keeping units in our stores."

RetailPro, a programme for points of sales, merchandising and inventory control for speciality retailers, is proven in more than 22,000 stores in 62 countries.

For Chennai-based Foodworld, which transacts 1.5 million bills per month, an average of 10 items per bill through 81 stores in nine cities, the need for IT is critical. It has helped the Chennai-based Foodworld bring down its inventory by a week to 20 days in the last year.

Says Foodworld Supermarkets Ltd president Oscar Braganza:"Our IT strategy is to ensure that the operational wheels of our business work robustly, with predictability and consistency, at optimal efficiency."