STEP LOGIC Discusses IT in Retail. The Latest Technologies, Trends, Forecasts, and Comments of Market Players
Roman Ostapchuk: "Now is a good time for IT professionals working in retail," says Deputy CEO for Technical Development at STEP LOGIC, who believes that retail is becoming one of the most high-tech business sectors.
In retail, competition for customers is shifting toward innovation. In this highly competitive industry, it is technology that attracts customers and helps reduce costs.
Rapid decision-making expands opportunities for innovations and helps implement them faster. On the other hand, users begin to demand almost instant effect – they shrug off technologies with a long payback period.
STEP LOGIC implements a variety of projects for retail chains, including economic modeling, development of technical security means, and various options for technological development of retail facilities.
The Company offers solutions based on RFID and other identifiers to monitor goods turnover at all levels, and also provides monitoring and infrastructure management based on industrial IoT systems. There are solutions for video analytics, thermal mapping, digital signage, etc.
We notice that retail primarily focuses on planning — from modeling new stores, simulating sales / customer flows to targeting demand. The second promising area is associated with reducing operating costs and minimising downtime. These tasks are quite successfully solved at the level of infrastructure management automation, including control of technological equipment, cash registers and telecommunication devices.
Stores have always had to deal with theft and vandalism. STEP LOGIC's experience in retail has proved that modern video surveillance systems are more efficient in combating theft than other equipment, special labeling or security services. In addition, intelligent video analytics is successfully used for marketing, merchandising and analysis of customer flows that seem chaotic at first glance.
The "front-end" part, which is intended for the consumer, also offers many innovations. Loyalty programmes have been completely transferred to websites, and the same systems of bonuses and discounts operate both online and at brick-and-mortar stores. Obviously, the boundaries between online and offline retail are blurring, and this opens up new opportunities for innovation.
How will this market develop, and what role do Russian integrators play at it? To get these questions answered, ICT-Online.ru has interviewed Roman Ostapchuk, Deputy CEO for Technical Development at STEP LOGIC, as well as representatives of CROC, ICL Services, Interprokom, DTG (LANIT group of companies), NORBIT (LANIT group of companies), Softline and FORS.
Read more on the ICT-online website.