Grocers to Spend $23 Billion on IT in 2007: Study

FRANKLIN, Tenn. - The global grocery industry will spend more than $23 billion this year on hardware, software, services, and IT labor this year, according to Retail WorldView, a new IT Sizing service offered by IHL Consulting Group, based here.

When combined with all other retail channels, the total projected spend on IT at retail surpasses $120 billion, according to the consulting group.

"Retailers individually spend well below other industries, about one-third of the amount per revenue dollar compared to financial services and insurance," said Greg Buzek, president of IHL. "However, what retailers lack in spending percentage of revenue they clearly make up in sheer volume, due to their high revenues. Retail is a huge market for IT that is growing just over 9 percent a year."

According to IHL, North America represents about 45 percent ($54 Billion) of the overall total in technology spend in retail, with Europe/Middle East/Africa representing another 28 percent of the market. While the Asia/Pacific market represents only 15 percent of the worldwide IT spend in retail, the region's collective retail IT spend is increasing at a rate of over 20 percent annually and is expected to do so for the next 3 years.

Retail Worldview tracks the hardware, software, services, and labor/overhead spending for retailers worldwide by region. Each of these technology areas is broken down by retail vertical - such as grocery, drug, specialty stores, and mass merchants -- for each region. In addition, spending is analyzed by 10 line-of-business areas including: business intelligence, store automation, merchandising and supply chain, e-commerce, sales/marketing, and infrastructure.

Each of these line-of-business categories is reviewed at a deeper level of detail for over 100 solution areas such as data warehouse, point-of-sale, CRM, workforce management, inventory control, and ERP. The study was developed to allow retailers to benchmark their own IT spend against an industry average.

For more information and a complete list of categories researched, visit www.ihlservices.com.
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