Don’t let Legacy Systems Hold Back your Retail Innovation Agenda

Is there a retailer who is not feeling the heat from Amazon and other digital upstarts? Surprisingly, yes. A study by RSR Research, Ramping Up Retail Innovation, reveals significant differences between how “retail winners” —  retailers with above-average sales growth – perceive the Amazon threat  and how laggard retailers see it.

A massive 83% of retail winners cite the encroachment of Amazon and other competitors into their space as one of their top three business challenges.  But only 66% of “non-winners” — retailers with average or below-average growth  — cite competing with Amazon as a major challenge.

Perhaps the  non-winners are more complacent than the winners. Or maybe they are simply too busy dealing with operational issues to spend a lot of time worrying about competition.

Whatever the reasons for the more relaxed attitude from  also-ran retailers, the finding is worrying,  because clearly retailers that are more aware of Amazon are more likely to find and implement innovative ways to compete with it.

Achieving faster innovation

The ability to innovate faster means companies can test out new solutions, analyze their effectiveness, and scale them up more easily and at a lower cost. Another key finding in the RSR report is that an overwhelming 93% of retail winners recognize that cloud computing helps them innovate faster, almost a third more than other retailers.

Perhaps even more interesting, the survey also shows another remarkable difference in that 71% of retail winners recognized implementing new core systems as a key factor in their ability to innovate, compared with a mere 40% of other retailers.

Over half of the retail laggards are still struggling with legacy systems which not only hold back their innovation agenda but create profit-killing inefficiencies.

Learn how Openbravo Commerce Cloud gives you the flexibility to innovate faster and more efficiently. Watch the webinar, “Seize the opportunity: move your retail business to Openbravo Cloud“.