Top Tech Trends 2010

By Joe Skorupa
Merchandising technologies are red hot. Customer analytics deliver incremental gains that add up to huge numbers when multiplied by chain math. Workforce management is tightly coupling to human resources and execution management to provide productivity benefits from hire to fire. And digital commerce platforms are being re-engineered to enable a new level of cross-channel shopping that includes e-commerce, mobile commerce and social retailing.

These are some of the key findings from the 20th Annual RIS/Gartner Retail Tech Trends Study, "Racing to Catch Up." At press time, it had already been downloaded more than 400 times within the first month of posting on the RIS Web site at www.risnews.com, and this number will double in the next few months.

I've had time to review the findings in-depth and made several presentations of them in front of groups of retailers. Here are my picks for the top retail tech trends in 2010:

Hottest category for immediate investment is merchandising. Forecasting and planning is number one on the list followed by price and markdown optimization and then by assortment planning. By upgrading specific elements in the merchandising suite retailers get immediate firepower to boost sales and improve customer satisfaction.

Leveraging customer analytics takes on new urgency. Shoppers use Internet-enabled devices to research products, make purchases, communicate with personal networks, and leave data trails behind. Leveraging this data is the top concern for retailers right now as they add a smart layer of analytics and BI to previous investments.

Enthusiasm for packaged application suites wanes. Best of breed or in-house app development is the preferred strategy today reversing a five-year trend. Retailers are not finding answers they seek in packaged suites -- a wake-up call for software vendors.

Workforce management morphs into a suite of logically grouped apps. Findings indicate strong investment interest in the human resources functions of recruiting/hiring and education/training. Combine this with execution management and a new end-to-end app suite emerges.

A new paradigm for cross-channel platforms. Beyond first-generation, second-generation or Web 2.0 capabilities a new digital platform is emerging that manages the convergence of e-commerce, mobile commerce and social media. This is a big development. Stay tuned.