Today’s ramblings are inspired by an overly chirpy PR lass who called recently with a brilliant article idea. Your readers must be fed up with all this stuff about the recession, she informed me, so how about running something a bit more positive, namely: the recession’s over and it has changed forever the way that business operates - companies have learned from past mistakes and new technologies will aid new, far more efficient ways of working etc etc.

I won’t go in to detail re. my reply, suffice to say that, accompanied by the sound of me choking on my mid-morning biscuit, it was along the lines of: “The recession’s over? Have you been at the sherry?”

But it did get me thinking. I’ve recently completed an end of year review for our Dec/Jan issue and, whilst the general message from retailers and tech vendors has been one of some semblance of confidence returning to the sector and IT budgets opening up in 2010, it’s clear that the recession is far from over. As is demonstrated by the investor panic over banks’ exposure to Dubai’s growing financial problems. To quote Gerard Lyons, chief economist with Standard Chartered, in The Times: “The market reaction shows how vulnerable some economies are to the aftermath of the debt binge. This highlights how fragile confidence is.”

So, apologies to the aforementioned PR lady but the ‘The recession is over. Let’s party!’ feature is on hold for the time being.

Just read an interesting post on BT Expedite’s recently launched blog, which can be found at: http://blog.btexpedite.com/

The company gathers the CIOs of its major clients together a couple of times a year to discuss the business outlook and how that impacts the use of technology in retailing. The blog post (How should BT react to lower spending by retailers?) looks at the most recent session, which focused on managing IT through recession. Highlights include:

1. Overall spending on IT is expected to fall in 2009 by around 20 per cent and will tend to include many more small, incremental projects aimed at sweating existing assets. As IT is competing with store investment for scarce funds, large re-platforming projects will be few and far between.

2.) Retailers want tech providers to be much faster at estimating new projects.

3.) In terms of the kind of software development projects retailers typically require around their PoS or merchandising systems, there is always a balance to be struck between undertaking bespoke work that meets the exact requirements of a particular customer and producing more standardised solutions to general problems. The cost implication is clear.

4.) The CIOs round the table indicated that they would like BT Fresca to push back on them when they ask for bespoke work and suggest a (lower cost) standardised option where available.

Some good stuff there and some cause for cheer despite trading conditions continuing to be tough. Overall spending on IT might well fall by around 20 per cent this year, but it could be argued that the sector has braved the worst of the economic storm. When the dust settles, those retailers who avoid knee jerk reactions and embrace technology in an innovative, consistent way and those tech providers who respond and adapt to the sort of feedback listed above will be best positioned for the post-downturn era.

I don’t imagine anyone in the sector will look back at 2009 with tears of nostalgia in their eyes, but many might well admit that they came out the other end strengthened through adversity with some valuable lessons learned. Or, as Winston Churchill put it: “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

This blog post was guest written by David Hogg, retail industry EMEA, Sterling Commerce

In a bid to keep their doors open to consumers during these turbulent economic times, retailers have been squeezing their margins and significantly cutting prices to try and woo people back into their stores. However, with the value of the pound still falling, import costs are on the rise and many retailers are feeling the full effect of the recession. Aside from possible tax cuts, there is little more that the Government can do to directly save the retail sector. So, if retailers want to carry on making a decent profit, whilst delivering competitive prices to the consumer, they need to address a way of cutting costs for themselves.

Many retailers have done what they thought was necessary – cut staff numbers and reduce floor space, or at the very worst, go into administration. But if you take a closer look at the more successful retailers, you will notice that many of the have addressed issues much closer to home. With consumers’ confidence knocked over the last year on how much money they should spend, or where they should spend it, their behaviour is even more unpredictable. Many retailers now find themselves stuck with stock that they can’t shift and a new order already on the way to an already packed warehouse.

To make sure that retailers can respond to fickle consumers, retailers need to have complete visibility of their supply chain. It’s like driving a car blindfolded, if you can’t see what you’re doing or where you are going, you don’t know what you might come across, or what you need to react to.

Retailers need inventory visibility and management with their third-party suppliers so that they can optimise future orders. They need full visibility of their warehouse management systems to find out just how much stock they have left to shift. They also need a reliable tracking system for their products, so that they can successfully deal with returns on unwanted sales items. This is even more important when it comes to e-retailing and satisfaction of home shoppers.

Those retailers who do invest in the right kind of technology, will be in a better state to start climbing up the retail ladder when we do finally get out of this painful recession.