IndiaRetailBiz

Close on heels of Reliance investing Rs.1,000 crore on technology, comes the news of the Kishore Biyani owned Future Group outsourcing its information technology infrastructure to Cisco and IBM, reports Business Standard. This would entail an outlay, over the next three years, of Rs. 400 crore.

Apart from ensuring critical flow of information, technology plays a vital role in smooth and efficient management of any retail chain. Technology, among others, can easily beconsidered as the most important ingredient in the success and growth of any retail chain in the world.

The Future Group, in the face of imminent competition from the likes of Wal-Mart-Bharti, Reliance, More (Birla) and Infiniti-Trent (Tata), has been compelled to accelerate its expansion plans. It has begun expanding its network at breakneck speed.

The Future Group, over the next one year, would invest about Rs 4,000 crore in different retail formats. While, the country’s biggest listed retailer, Pantaloon Retail, is working towards 10-fold growth in number of stores from 340-odd in 40 cities at present to 3,500 in 90 cities, by 2011, the group has also embarked on setting up 12 malls under the ‘Central’ and ‘Brand Factory’ formats in different locations.

In order to obtain the best technology available any where in the world, the Future group has decided to award IT contracts to a consortium of technology companies. While IBM is expected to develop and deploy all software applications including ERP (enterprise resource planning) and supply chain management, networking giant Cisco is likely to create a wireless environment.

Currently, the group has close to 350 people working under IT group.