Retailers Sold on IT

Retail and distribution companies once viewed IT as a way to improve supply chain management and store operations. These days, they use technology solutions to manage relationships with customers, vendors and business partners.

The essential premise of running a successful retail or distribution business is a simplistic but time-proven adage: To make it, you gotta sell things that people want to buy. But the formula for getting products to a customer requires constant market research, product development, testing and effective distribution.

Similarly, demand continues to rise for technology solutions that better enable retailers to pursue those tasks. Enterprise IT spending among retail businesses is expected to increase to an estimated $151.2 billion in 2011, up from $142.4 billion in 2009, according to industry researcher Gartner.

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