The death of the high street - challenge and opportunity

The research reveals an almost unilateral shift to delivering on ecommerce – 80 percent of retailers are now prioritising online services as a result of the death of the high street, according to IT decision makers in retail. But this doesn’t come without its challenges – with 86 percent of IT decision makers in retail saying that this movement to digital channels has generated greater competition online.

Changing technology demands

Rackspace surveyed 250 IT decision makers in the UK retail industry to see how they are adopting new technologies to react to shifting consumer trends, while continuing to deliver cost-savings and a flawless customer experience.

It found that key factors impacting IT strategies as a result of the death of the high street included:

• The need to drive more traffic to the website (52 percent)
• The need to handle more traffic on the website (44 percent)
• The need to deliver a faultless omnichannel customer experience (34 percent)
• The need to better integrate customer experiences online and in store (42 percent)
• The need to implement new consumer-facing technologies, both introducing in-store experiential technologies like VR and AR (26 percent) and automated services online (31 percent)

Lee James, EMEA CTO, Rackspace commented: “The growth and dominance of web and mobile channels has led to waning high-street footfall, and the race to transform both the in-store and online experience is putting immense pressure on IT departments. These factors are shifting IT strategies, further complicating the challenges decision makers face in delivering, designing and implementing new highly-secure, bespoke solutions.”

The drive for new technologies

Retailers are turning to new technologies to solve the problems posed by the death of the high-street, particularly when it comes to ecommerce. When asked about specific technology investments, more respondents indicated that they plan to invest in their online capabilities than instore capabilities [see Figure 1 below], with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (33 percent), chatbots (30 percent), and virtual and augmented reality (24 percent) primed for significant adoption.

However, the three leading technologies set to be adopted over the next 12 months as part of an IT strategy are data analytics (48 percent), mobile applications (46 percent), cyber security (46 percent). These three technologies also dominate UK retail IT department budgets for the year ahead, representing 13 percent, 13 percent and 12 percent respectively on average.

James continued, “Retail IT departments see investing in new technologies as an opportunity to reinvigorate the instore experience. The same technologies that will be so vital to the inevitable ecommerce expansion – like data analytics, mobile applications and artificial intelligence – can help to deliver on a flawless customer experience across every channel.”

Barriers to delivering this vision

Retail IT leaders are ambitious, but there are significant barriers to delivering on this vision. Those surveyed revealed that the greatest of these were: budget constraints (42 percent), a lack of IT / technical skills (27 percent), the availability of partners to support (20 percent), legal and regulatory compliance (19 percent), and a lack of strategic vision (18 percent). While, for those IT decision makers that are not planning to implement any new technologies over the next 12 months, 50 percent said that this was due to the lack of a clear roadmap.

James concluded, “The death of the high street presents a very real and immediate threat for retailers of all shapes and sizes. However, this is not just a barrier, but also an opportunity for IT decision makers, as they look to embrace new technologies to deliver a flawless customer experience instore and online. This is a big undertaking for any business, but partnering with an expert managed service provider can support retail leaders in putting a road map in place to successfully navigate the death of the high street”.