BPO, IT firms eye biz from retail promos

Indian IT/ITeS companies are gearing up to have a pie of the retail promotions market by providing cost-effective services and solutions to assist marketers gain time-to-market and reduce costs of marketing promotions.

Many Indian IT and BPO/KPO firms including Wipro, iGate, Manthan, Intelenet, vCustomer, WNS, Evalueserve, Xansa and Integrated Retail are specialising in providing business process services for retail companies.

According to a report by the Promotions Management Association, the spending on retail promotions globally is estimated to be around $300 billion, of which in-store promotions account for $867 million. "The promotion spending is expected to increase by at least 2 per cent in the current fiscal," it added. 
 

ON RETAIL WAY
Company	Expertise
Wipro	Retail consulting services, retail package implementation
Convergys	Customer service, recruiting, customer analytics, HR, payroll
iGate	supplier negotiation services, merchandising, inventory management, logistics, store operations
Intelenet	Outbound telemarketing, cross-selling, up-selling, customised business research, transaction processing
WNS	contract administration, order support, F&A, analytics, telemarketing, sales
Xansa	multi-channel retail services, store performance analytics, F&A, HR services
Customer	customer service, telemarketing, back-office processes

In June last year, Wipro acquired Portugal-based retail solutions provider Enabler to expand its retail solutions and services portfolio. "The retail industry is one of the largest and fastest growing sectors in the enterprise solutions market for Wipro. The experience we are getting with Enabler will strengthen our position in the retail package implementation and retail process industry," Sudip Banerjee, president (Enterprise Solutions), Wipro Technologies, had said after the acquisition.

Recently, Wipro has also announced partnership with Manhattan Associates, a supply chain solutions provider, to provide IT consulting and system integration services to retail enterprises.

Manthan Systems, a company which provides business intelligence solutions to retail industries, has partnered with enterprise software and mobile software firm Sybase to market easy-to-deploy and cost-effective business intelligence solutions.

Convergys, a BPO firm, is specialising in providing customer analytics, support services, recruitment services and services related to payroll management. iGate Solutions is mastering to offer services in the areas of supplier negotiation, merchandising, invoice payment and store operations. WNS, a BPO and KPO firm, is helping out global retail giants in telemarketing, sales, contract administration and supply chain management.

Eugene Kublanov, CEO, neoIT, said: "The retail industry is now beginning to discover that it can optimise promotions by using global services to analyse large volumes of real-time customer data."

According to a recent report by neoIT, a services globalisation consulting firm, while about 80 per cent of Fortune 500 retailers have already moved some retail services offshore, it has not happened on a large scale.

It said that while many leading retailers had already incorporated components of global services for IT processing and transactional business processes, this had not happened up to the same extent in the case of retail marketing promotions.

"A huge opportunity exists for retailers to improve promotions and profitability, by outsourcing more complex business processes as well as knowledge processes," it said.

Many global retail giants have started offshoring core processes like merchandise planning, supply chain management, store administration and customer analytics, apart from the traditional back and front office processes to India.