Real Time to Change

I came across this excellent article publisher by RSR (Retail Systems Research) on how technology has been an enabling factor in helping retailers react faster to customer demands. What I liked though is found in the last part of the article - "Technology companies love to talk about technology. Retailers love to talk about their people. Finally, process – empowered and accelerated by information and the technologies that deliver it – is finally getting a hearing in retail". How many times have retailers thought that just putting a technology will resolve their problems. Well technology is a solution that can enable a better process but cant substitute for it. On the other hand being able to use technology to adopt quickly to a changing business environment can be critical in a business like retail - "In his 1999 book entitled Adaptive Enterprise: Creating and Leading Sense-And-Respond Organizations, author Stephen Haeckel took the position that the rate and discontinuity of change in the business environment overwhelms organizations’ abilities to correct mistaken assumptions in their business plans. Therefore, he argued, businesses must architect their processes and supporting technologies to be able to respond very quickly to changing conditions."