We expect tech companies to continually bring us innovative ways to reach our business goals through digitalization. While innovations drive our global economy and are well worth the attention they get, all too often, this attention is focused more on the “wow!” factor rather than the foundational digital capabilities retailers desperately need with their retail technology, in order to stay competitive amidst the disruptions of the 21st century. 

Take the COVID-19 pandemic as a case in point. For retail, this event has had a widespread impact. For many organizations in this industry, there is still a lot of recovery to go through and uncertainty about how things will play out. Recent, pre-COVID, innovations to the industry include fancy technologies based around virtual reality and digital screens – allowing users, for example, to explore retail stores without leaving their homes or trying on clothes and outfits using a computer instead of a dressing room.  

While these innovations are interesting and fun, they do little to realistically help retail businesses survive in what was an already wildly competitive industry. Right now, as organizations fight to stay open, there is a clear need for technological innovation that is purely practical and addresses the fundamental needs of any business in retail today. 

Driving success with retail technology that addresses the fundamentals 

Perhaps some of these new and exciting innovations will greatly improve the future of retail, especially from a consumer’s perspective. But right now, practical solutions to the most vexing challenges retailers face in the real world seem to be overlooked. Problems, for example, like integrated software systems that provide executives down to store managers planning solutions for inventory and staffing combined with Business Intelligence (BI) reporting and financial consolidation. 

This is particularly true today when retailers are spending inordinate amounts of time and capital trying to get 10- to 15-year-old enterprise retail systems to talk to one another, despite them being on separate architectures and outdated hardware. Likewise, outdated FP&A processes are still commonly led by digital tools like Excel, providing users with little to no workflow capabilities.  

Even in the cases where organizations have deployed retail technology to manage their planning needs, many are still suffering when it comes to finding a suitable and “compatible” BI reporting platform to work alongside it. This, coupled with a need for a forecasting platform that provides decision-making insight (so businesses can adapt fluidly during a time that is difficult and unpredictable), begins to add up to show precisely where technological innovation needs to be focused right now.  

It is the fundamentals that need to be addressed first and foremost; fundamentals addressed through a unique platform that blends BI reporting and retail planning and forecasting in a single environment – providing retailers with digital transformation across finance, operations, sales, and HR. 

Integrated Retail Planning and Analytics 

Agile decision-making has become vital to survival for fashion and luxury retailers – necessitating a holistic digital transformation that enables proactive decision-making and allows for real-time visibility of performance across the entire business. Outdated and time-consuming planning cycles undertaken on spreadsheets must be replaced with technology that provides this much-needed agile approach. 

Register now and join us on this exclusive webinar where we will explore, alongside some of the world’s leading fashion and luxury retailers, how Board is the key to riding out disruption in 2021.