| | October 20148CIOReviewopinionin myMobile, Cloud and Big Data Are technology innovations in these areas attempting to solve some unknown problem or real challenges in retail?By Herman Nell, SVP & CIO, Rent-A-CenterRetail customers are alive and well and becoming more empowered with each passing day. Despite often having less discretionary income, retail customers are more informed than ever before due to greater retail transparency from on-line sources and the heightened use of web-enabled devices. As such, we are transitioning from a period where merchants "decided" what the customer wanted, to an era where marketing departments analyze a ton of data (big data?) to determine the exact nature of a prospective customer's need and the optimal response to the customer. This dynamic gives rise to an ever faster changing retail landscape. As such, we are an industry urgently in search of innovation and innovative approaches to challenges that are often new or have a new spin to them. For an industry with margins under pressure and limited profitability-enhancing levers to pull, technology seems to be one of the leading solutions to so many of today's challenges. Yet, technology has not historically been retail's strong suit. The leverage factor or magnification of technology costs being applied in so many stores poses a daunting challenge to any retail CIO. And it should come as no surprise that the retail industry has historically spent less on technology, as a percent of revenue, than most other industries. In some respects, you might say the retail industry is trying to play catch-up on the technology front. To complicate matters even further, the industry's cycle of continuous technological innovation is accelerating (think release of new models of tablets and smart phones) and consequently adds to more changes in customer needs and behavior. It also generates solutions that often seem very perishable as they are replaced by newer technologies. Herman Nell
< Page 7 | Page 9 >