Crumbling Wal?

For the last decade or so the retail landscape has been dominated by the Bentonville giant. Numbers from as recent as 2004 reflect the hold it has on retail market. But like changes in every field, the one in retail also came swooping and W*M has some challenges on its plate. I came across a very good article by Paula Rosenblum of Retail Systems Research on the challenges facing the giant. Some key observations cited by Ms. Rosenblum that I found interesting were pertaining to how retailers have responded to W*M's presence - "In a post Wal-Mart world, retailers could not differentiate on operational efficiencies, or selling commodities. Wal-Mart owned that space. Retailers like Target, who made hay by selling really cool stuff cheap (or somehow making commodities seem cool), Costco who made warehouse shopping chic, and Whole Foods, who gained its customers trust by being at the forefront of eco-friendly and healthy, started knocking the ball out of the park by NOT being like Wal-Mart". The article goes on to recommend how W*M can use IT to bring back its "mojo". One very interesting part of this recommendation was the use of RFID instore to track stock movements. However given some of the technological (hardware) problems related to RFID, I am not sure how practical that is. Only the future will tell if the Wal's crumbling or the Mojo's Risin.....

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."