STORES Magazine - April 2008 - (Page E2)

According to a recent report from Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, global GDP growth for 2006 was 5.4 percent, one of the largest year-over-year increases ever recorded.1 Relatively rapid economic expansion took place in such disparate locations as Argentina, Canada, China, Germany, India, Russia, the U.K. and the United States. While difficulties in the North American housing and financial markets are expected to have a somewhat depressing effect on overall global growth rates for 2007 and 2008 (the International Monetary Fund, in fact, has recently lowered its 2008 global GDP growth projection from 4.9 percent to 4.1 percent)2, many less-developed markets should continue to expand healthily. Retailers, seeking opportunities outside their often heavily developed home markets, have been making international expansion a key component of their growth strategies. Of respondents to a recent survey of apparel retailers conducted by AMR Research, 42 percent cited international expansion as a key area of growth, an increase of 36 percent from 2006.3 This result “validates existing research that shows intense competition in this category, along with defensive moves to keep key rivals honest in their home regions,” according to the report. “While many brands moving outside their primary bases have not performed as well as expected, it appears either competition or opportunity is becoming too attractive [to pass up].” tions: language, currency, tax regulations, etc. Increasingly, POS also is a key component in customer relations and customer satisfaction, as well as a retailer’s primary source of operating data: While it needs to communicate fluently with your associates and customers in Bahrain or Denmark or Singapore, it needs to communicate just as fluently with your organization’s supply chain management, merchandising, accounting, strategic planning and other core systems and capabilities. When considering global expansion, retailers need to assess the capabilities of their POS solution with respect to: 1 Managing a global environment; 2 The global customer experience model; 3 Integration across the enterprise; 4 Ease of implementation and upgradability; and 5 Global IT infrastructure and support. MANAGING A GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT In planning for the management of a global retail environment, it is essential to take into account the probability of continued expansion. The world is “shrinking” in the sense that there is now an established global economy, but at the same time it is expanding in terms of the number of local market opportunities that are opening up. Events make it difficult to predict exactly where these market opportunities will appear. A number of now-thriving pockets of commerce were poverty-stricken war zones as recently as 15 years ago — and in some cases the reverse is true — but global planning needs to assume that they will, as they are now, be numerous and scattered. This will require an enterprise-wide POS system with the flexibility to manage many different local requirements, including: • Availability/management of text for translation. A POS system must be able to support each country’s native language. However, in a truly global POS system, the cashier should be able to select a language when he or she logs in, or the POS system recognizes the user and adjusts accordingly. • A wide variety of name and address protocols. In specifying an address, for example, Asian languages tend to narrow down from country to postal code to state, city and finally street number — almost exactly the opposite of American or European address conventions. As to names, in some languages it is essential that the system display not only the name but the appropriate hon- THE CHALLENGE OF GOING GLOBAL As international expansion becomes an increasingly attractive strategy, the list of multi-national retailers, particularly specialty retailers, will continue to grow. Leveraging the opportunity presented by hot spots of economic expansion around the world presents certain challenges, however. With globalization comes an increase in the complexity of managing core infrastructure, particularly pointof-sale (POS) systems. POS (along with the Web channel) is the most directly customer-facing component of retail technology and the one subject to the most customization for local condi- 1 “2008 Global Powers of Retailing,” Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu/STORES, January 2008. 2 “Revised World Economic Outlook,” International Monetary Fund, January 29, 2008. 3 “Top Technology Trends in the Apparel Market,” AMR Research, January 2008. 4 “Business Intelligence in Retail Merchandising,” Aberdeen Group, February 2008. EPICOR / APRIL 2008 E2

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of STORES Magazine - April 2008

STORES Magazine - April 2008 Contents Executive Editor's Page President's Page More Retailers Bagging Monthly Comp-Store Reports Time-Warner Center's Economy-Defying Results What Shoppers Think 10 Things You May Have Missed Numbers Worth Counting Full Price/Markdown Retail People Eating Locally Grocery Concept2Watch Restaurants Online Services Marketing Human Resources Product Lifecycle Management E-Commerce: Peer Reviews Drive Online Buyers Kiosks Recycling Operations Payment Systems POS Logistics E-Commerce: Getting Personal Website Management LOEB Retail Letter Arts Update Point of View NRF News Retail Industry Calendar Last Laugh

STORES Magazine - April 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.