An Early Look At Retail Tech Spending In 2016

By Matt Pillar, chief editor

Nearly 78 percent of the 500 retail executives we surveyed for our 2016 Retail Tech Spending Report (due out next month) said their companies place emphasis on innovative technologies and processes to increase margins and improve the customer experience.

The question allows a lot of wiggle room for the definition of innovation, which is why I suspect so many think the technologies and processes they’re adopting (or planning to adopt) are innovative. To innovate is to make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products. To any merchant, innovation can be as simple as introducing a hotly anticipated product line. To the pure-play e-commerce retailer, innovation can mean opening a physical store. To the mega national omni-channel retailer, innovation can mean extending order management and CRM applications to store associate’s mobile devices to mirror the customer’s rich online experience.

Innovation is in the eye of the beholder, accessible by all, and its continuum is infinite.

When we distill our early 2016 tech spending survey results down to mid-market and larger multichannel merchants, we see a very clear story unfolding. The story’s protagonist is omni-channel. Its antagonists are legacy systems. Its heroes are inventory visibility, order management, cloud, and store-level digital transformation. The plot to this choose-your-own adventure novel is quickly building.

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