By Lisa Burroughes, 18 August 1998 00:25
NEWS One in five UK retailers are not meeting customers' needs as well as they could because of poor IT integration in the business chain, according to the latest report from Spikes Cavell. The report claims the various business operations - from the warehouse through to the head office - are typically run on separate IT systems. Retailers are therefore unable to respond as quickly to customer needs as they could, and as a result, many product orders are wrong and shelf space is wasted. Spikes Cavell said that IT and business managers need to work together more closely if they are to gain a competitive advantage. Jonathan Crabb, project manager at Spikes Cavell, said this is being realised. "Business managers are of the opinion that unless their IT department embraces the concept of a fully integrated information system, their organisation is going to be seriously disadvantaged in the future," he said. Some retail business managers said in the survey that without a data warehousing system, and with poor management information systems, they are not able to gain a competitive advantage. The survey quizzed business and IT managers from 97 of the top 200 retail organisations in the UK.
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