News

Cash-flush retailers will spend on IT

July 11, 2011

Retailers have extra cash and nearly half of the top 100 plan to lay out some of it on technology, a Reuters news story reports.

The story cites a survey conducted in May and June by audit, tax and advisory firm KPMG LLP, which showed that 72 percent of the top 100 retail operators are carrying extra cash on their balance sheet.

Of these 100 retailers, 47 percent said that in 2012, they planned to invest primarily in technology tools that would support company planning, growth and expansion.

Mark Larson, KPMG global retail leader, said in the Reuters story that retailers and their suppliers will spend money on tools that will help them to analyze enormous amounts of data captured online and at the cash register.

"Analytics says let's use emerging technology to do a deep dive into that data to make it useful," Larson said. "The customer's wallet is not going to be growing, so the game has to be to grab more of that wallet. We need to neatly dive into their behavior to really understand what they value and what they're going to buy."