HCLT Whitepaper: Transforming Store Operations and Customer Experience

Transforming
Store Operations and Customer Experience
Mobility takes retail operations to the next level

Authors:
Satya Krishna
Sriram Anantharaman
Hari Krishnamurthy
Chinmay Sohoni
Shobha Gujjari

FEBRUARY 2012

Transforming Store Operations and Customer Experience | FEBRUARY 2012

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract 3
Excerpts 4
Market Trends, Potential & Opportunity 4
Trends in Mobility 4
Trends in Retail 5
Impact of Mobility 5
Impact on Consumer 6
Impact on Retail Industry & Processes 6
Impact on Technology 7
Drivers for Adoption 8
Challenges in the Retail Value Chain 9
Role of Mobility across Retail Value Chain 10
Retail Connect – HCL Mobility Solution for Retailers 12
Key Solution Features 13
Why Retail Connect? 14
Conclusion 15
About the Author 16
About HCL 18

2 © 2012, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.


Abstract
Retailers are in the process of building mobile applications, seeing an opportunity
to enable one-to-one marketing and improve customer experience. Retail supply
chains have become increasingly global and complex, presenting greater challenges
in managing supply and demand. New customers and distribution channels have
developed, enhanced by technological innovations and geographical expansion.
Existing channels are under pressure and require constant change to retain
market position. Retailers have long used mobile devices for inventory purposes,
but now they are racing to catch up with their customers’ broad use of mobility.
There is a strong demand for customer-facing mobility solutions and solutions
for mobilizing store associates to enable better customer service. In countless
ways, mobility is boosting business productivity, speed and responsiveness. Tools
like notebook computers, PDAs, cell phones, Wi-Fi networks and Virtual Private
Networks (VPNs) have turned ‘business on the move’ into ‘business as usual’.
At the same time, a number of organizations have also implemented mobility in
a tactical and piecemeal manner, not realizing the gains possible from adopting a
true strategic approach to mobility.
The potential benefits of becoming a mobile enterprise are – utilizing new ways
of streamlining operations, reducing costs, increasing workforce productivity and
cash-on the power of real-time response. We believe mobility will let companies
transcend distance and connectivity issues, create a virtual, personalized space for
collaboration and empower front-line workers to make better, faster decisions.
This whitepaper elaborates the vision to show how mobility will impact/ influence
the consumer shopping experience and improve retail value chain processes, by
enhancing workflow, increasing the speed of business transactions with near real-
time communication between enterprise systems and personnel and providing
better modes of reporting and management for a variety of stakeholders across
the retail value chain.



Excerpts
Retailers and consumer packaged goods manufacturers around the globe invest
significantly more than $100 bn in programs designed to achieve an agreed rate
of “sell-through”, whether online or in-stores. Most of the investments go dead
because organizations fail to empower the execution of their sell-through plan
in stores and fail to provide consumer experience continuity between online and
offline shopping experiences.

Retailers are constantly attempting to achieve a balance between improving daily
operations and enhancing customer experience. To improve and continuously
deliver value to all stakeholders in the current business scenario, it is important
for the retailer to continuously deliver higher levels of customer service and
simultaneously bring down the costs of their business operations.

At HCL, we believe that any solution engineered, should be in line with the
retailer’s growth and expansion strategy conceived for the next five years.
Therefore, we align our thoughts to address the various business challenges in
the retail ecosystem, by offering you ‘Retail Connect’ -- an integrated solution
suite for the retail industry.

Our solution aims to overcome the present day challenges in line with the
current technology trends in mobile space, enabling real-time performance
improvement at store and opportunities to enhance customer experience and
increase profitability.

Market Trends, Potential & Opportunity
Trends in Mobility

The number of wireless devices in the United States has surpassed the country’s
total population (according to 2011 CTIA survey). Hence, effectively, there
is more than one wireless device per person. There is also a large amount of
diversity inherent in mobility. More than three billion people and almost over
half of our small planet are equipped with mobile phones and this is just the tip
of the iceberg.

The changing business models are leading to web-based and mobile-based
applications. As this gets evolved further, almost 40% of the operations will
be done using mobile channels. The consumers are getting more demanding
and impatient, seeking purchase information faster to make quick and informed
decisions.

Increase efficiency & productivity at all touch-points - Mobility is boosting
business productivity, speed and responsiveness. All the touch-points in retail
stores, such as pre-store planning, checkout, outside store, at shelf use and usage
at home, among others are being made more efficient by using mobile channels.



Manage store operations & employee effectiveness - Retailers are leveraging
mobility to make their store operations efficient, improving their customer
experience and also increasing the effectiveness of their internal staff.

Growth in business and consumer spending on mobile internet has exceeded
expected estimates. In terms of business investment, expenditures on mobile
marketing in the US alone are forecast to exceed $1 bn in 2011 and $1.5 bn in 2012.
Pacing this growth in revenue is the consumer adoption rate for smartphones
and other internet-capable mobile devices which is a critical determinant of
potential market size. Research agencies predict that by 2015 over 36% of all US
consumers are expected to be using mobile internet.

Improving consumer experience & purchase cycle - Mobile usability
improves the customer experience dramatically due to the advances in the device
technology and the best practices for the design and development of software,
small screens and touch screens.

Trends in Retail

Consumer’s tendency to rely on mobile devices to seek real-time purchase
input - The ability to quickly share photos and compare prices through a growing
number of applications is having an immediate impact on the consumer’s
purchase decision. Mobile has been an effective medium to access peer opinion
and customer advocacy which is an integral part of buying behavior.

Retailers will extend their traditional CRM strategies through the mobile
channel - Immediate opportunities exist for retailers to leverage the convenience
of the mobile channel to alert customers of new/ seasonal sales, update customer
order status and distribute personalized coupons. Another likely extension is the
use of Near Field Communication (NFC) at stores for recognizing personalized
mobile coupons sent to the customer. Using NFC-enabled mobile payment
gateways at Point of Sale (POS) terminal reduces the overall billing transaction
time. The investment required for these enabling technologies is quite minimal.
In fact, it should be viewed as an extension of existing CRM initiatives.

Leverage mobile communications for efficient inventory management
and gaining traction - The retailers need to tailor messages for the mobile
channel. Text limitations, mobile site capabilities and handset variations are the
parameters defining mobile communication strategies. Mobile is an efficient way
to alert loyal consumers about specific item sales or a particular promotion and
many more strategic ways to move excess inventory and manage them efficiently.
By extending eCommerce strategies into the mobile environment, retailers are
taking advantage of their web experiences to develop an integrated strategy that
has the potential to create a unique mobile retail channel.

Impact of Mobility
Mobility has affected not only consumer experience and purchase decisions
but also the way retailers manage their internal process flows and their alliance
relationships. This has changed the nature of business processes and has opened


the door for new, transformational business models. Mobile technology will also
call for changes in the systems and infrastructure that support the business, with
implications for networks, devices, databases and applications.

Impact on Consumer

The impact of mobility on the consumer has been in a number of ways. Mobile
offers an immediate opportunity for retailers to connect with their customers in
a meaningful way. Mobile communications have led to even more power in the
hands of individuals taking us to an era of the hyper-connected consumer.

Enhanced shopping experience - Mobile services integrated into the
shopping experience, such as self-scanning and mobile payments, are helping
consumers to get what they want more quickly. Even simple services such as
mobile shopping lists can help consumers manage their lives better. The hyper-
connected consumer will increasingly demand right information and tools at the
right time to make good choices. Mobile services like extended packaging, allow
consumers to choose products that are aligned with values such as health and
well-being, respect for the environment and ethical choices.

Mobility provides enlightenment of consumers to know more than ever about
their choices. The consumers can now make comparisons and shop for the
best price with ease. They get what they want, when they want it and influence
the opinion, in positive or negative, of thousands or even millions of other
consumers.

This has also created challenges for businesses with a highly networked
environment. How do they best find out what consumers want, offer them
differentiated products and services and create and maintain a powerfully positive
brand image?

Impact on Retail Industry & Processes

Mobilization has penetrated the retail business process at the task-management
level. With remote task administration, work is centrally-assigned, modified,
optimized and redistributed to available resources. Mobilized workflows
have increased self-sufficiency, and decreased time to completion. Real-time
monitoring has led to reduced downtime. Mobile reporting has empowered the
managers to make timely and better decisions with improved access to real-time
situational information.

Consumer Insights - As the hyper-connected customers weave mobile
interaction into their daily lives, retailers can gain greater insights into customer
needs. This brings out the unprecedented opportunities for enhancing customer
interaction and intimacy. Using the information from mobile tools, retailers can
employ rules-based rendering techniques to present highly customized, relevant
and timely offers. Moreover, by giving customers what they want — more ways
to interact with their product and services providers — retailers also strengthen
their relationships.



Improving internal & supply chain processes - This mobilized approach has
changed the way businesses manage their internal and supply chain relationships,
primarily in terms of information flow. Work task context awareness has brought
improvements in the way tasks are assigned and performed as status information
is dynamically monitored by performance alerting support systems. Mobile data
capture and viewing provides real-time visibility for “live” information streams,
while optimized data delivery supports many kinds of end devices.

Innovations in the business ecosystem - Beyond the changes in internal
operations, mobilization has changed the way companies are working with their
business partners, leading to the development of business “ecosystems”. The
free flow of information means greater innovation as partners collaborate under
a shared vision supported by an integrated infrastructure. The synchronization
of mobile workforces and central information systems is a value-add for all
participants, providing new and better ways to orchestrate the development of
global markets.

Impact on Technology

The impact of mobility on technology has been manifold, offering more choices,
ease to consumer and creating efficiency and productivity for retailers.

Functionality-driven benefits to consumers - Retailers have begun taking
advantage of technologies such as RFID to enable mobile consumers to browse
circulars on the handset, find additional information about products and make
purchases with the snap of a camera phone.

Customers can now use their smartphones as a mobile shopping cart. Once a
customer gets near his favorite store (which can now be detected in present day
smartphones with integrated GPS) he can be alerted about ongoing seasonal
promotions and clearances in no time. Integrating this application with social
networks can allow the customer to experience first-hand reviews from his
closest friends about the chosen merchandize and ongoing best deals. Once
the customer expresses his wish to pay, the smartphone can be programmed to
connect to a mobile gateway for the store by taking the customer’s most preferred
credit card details and generate an e-bill and an invoice for the store pickup or a
direct store delivery.

Processes-driven changes for employees - Mobile technology has emerged as
a necessity and is no longer seen as a luxury anymore. The continuing spread of
mobile technology will have a dramatic impact on the way retailers do business
in the years to come. The latest mobile technologies have also improved the
way employees interact with core business systems. The personalization lets
employees set application and device preferences to customize their interaction,
in terms of work flow, content, formatting, accessories and features. Store-
level merchandizers and field agents enabled with advanced mobile technology,
will bring more efficiency in store-level execution of category assortments,
promotions and delivery operations. Companies that embrace mobile technology
will witness improvements in productivity and operational efficiency that were
unimaginable a few years ago.



Drivers for Adoption
Mobile retail has evolved from being seen as an alternate channel by retailers, to
becoming an opportunity capable of giving them an edge over their conventional
competitors. The progressive mobile trends in the retail space are fuelled by
the drivers identified below, leading to the adoption of mobile technology in
retail firms.

• Multi-channel integration - Bringing web and store experiences together
will maximize return-on-investment in both channels (for example, by
allowing customers to order in stores for home delivery, or vice versa).

• Customer engagement and loyalty - Retailers are trying to find new ways to
get consumers into stores and interact with them to influence their behavior
toward repeat buying and impulse buying, with minimal delay or friction in
the transaction.

• Staff enablement - Giving employees the ability to train, access product
information, take orders and complete payments from anywhere in the store,
will make them more productive.

• Mobile commerce coming of age – The mobile device, from acting as
a connective tissue connecting print and online media, has now become an
important channel especially for retailers to create lucrative revenue and brand
establishment.

• Mobile coupons becoming mainstream - Mobile coupons allow retailers to
have a highly targeted coupon distribution system as compared to traditional
mechanisms, leading to much higher consumer engagement and returns on
investment. Coupons, combined with new age technology such as QR codes
and NFC, make mobile purchasing as simple as a daily routine activity.

• Integration of social networking with mobile devices - Increased speed of
information dissemination on social networks through mobile devices, makes
mobile devices the perfect partners for the social networks. In fact, Facebook
and Twitter applications are amongst the most popular downloads from the
App Stores across device types. Consumers increasingly count on feedback
from peers and connections for pre-purchase decision making. Location-
based services allow for contextual information search and dispersal.

• Mobile is an integral part of the purchase decision process - Consumers
are increasingly using their mobile devices in their purchase process. From
searching for information and evaluation of alternatives, to purchasing the
product and broadcasting post-purchase feedback.

Consumers are also increasingly using mobile devices to access other popular
websites to gain benefits of collective purchasing.

At HCL, we believe that any solution engineered, should be in line with the
retailer’s growth and expansion strategy conceived for the next five years.
Therefore, we align our thoughts to address the various business challenges in


the retail ecosystem, by offering you ‘Retail Connect’ -- an integrated solution
suite for the retail industry.

Our solution aims to overcome the present day challenges in line with the current
technology trends in mobile space, enabling real-time performance improvement
at store providing opportunities to enhance customer experience and increase
profitability. The solution also extends across every echelon throughout the retail
value chain for potential improvements in data & process visibility, cycle time
reduction in business decision making activities & improved co-ordination of
workforce across the value chain

Challenges in the Retail Value Chain
Retailers and consumer packaged goods manufacturers around the globe invest
significantly more than $100 bn in programs designed to achieve an agreed rate
of “sell-through”, whether online or in-stores. Most of the investments go dead
because organizations fail to empower the execution of their sell-through plan
in stores and fail to provide consumer experience continuity between online and
offline shopping experiences.

Retailers are constantly attempting to achieve a balance between improving daily
operations and enhancing customer experience.

To improve and continuously deliver value to all stakeholders in the current
business scenario, it is important for the retailer to continuously deliver higher
levels of customer service and simultaneously bring down the costs of their
business operations. Considering the current retailing scenario, the primary
challenges across the value chain are:

• Challenge to enhance productivity of daily retail operations

❚❚ Inability to drive business processes due to:
- Lack of real-time insight on store/ warehouse workforce availability
and lack of real-time information to communicate with customer/
colleagues
- Unmanaged workforce at supply chain echelons to attend real-
time promotion labeling, ad-hoc and seasonal in-store/ warehouse
replenishment, in-store customer service, etc
- Lack of real-time supply chain disruptions ensuring resilient logistics
and fulfillment operations
- Lack of real-time visibility and traceability to supply chain distribution
and direct store delivery operations
- Lack of real-time information on seasonal impacts affecting status quo
of retail operations such as desired stock to shelf lead times and other
key performance terms



- Lack of real-time insight into key performance indicators on store
performance like customer traffic, best and worst selling merchandize,
inventory levels, etc

• Challenge in providing supreme customer service
❚❚ Need to improve customer intimacy
- Lack of store colleague capability to sustain and improve quality of
service
- Customers requiring sufficient responsiveness from store manager and
colleagues on ad-hoc interactions
- Customer unable to receive real-time individualized promotional offers
or deals based on personalized buy list

❚❚ Reach greater heights to understand customer better to match their
expectations
- Customer expects discounts via mobile coupons to be used readily at
store
- Customer preference for easy in-store navigation (POG View); zoom
in/out in any crowded day
- Customer prefers to have a single view of product/ price/ stock across
channels on his mobile device
- Customer prefers to know about alternate products available at the
store or with the retailer at any point of time, anywhere

Role of Mobility across Retail Value Chain
Mobile as a new communication channel definitely finds its place across the retail
value chain to fructify this differentiation.

Given the retail value chain as a whole, retail stores thrive as a most promising
environment for gaining new insights about customer buying behavior and daily
sales operations, wherein technology is greatly used as an accelerator for greater
business benefits (Gartner, February 2011).



‘Retail Store’

Mobile applications in the hands of a store manager or store colleague is
perceived to enhance the overall store performance with the real-time insight
into daily store operations saving shop floor personnel’s valuable time. Peer-
to-peer messages like simple status message on receiving or cycle counting
operations, ad-hoc replenishment requests, labor allocation/ completion statuses
and real-time feeds that promise visibility into inventory availability across brick
& mortar and online stores with a single swipe of a finger. A dashboard for the
store manager is looked as a single source of real-time information for sales,
customer footfall trends, sell-through performance, category performance, labor
availability, etc.

Customer experience functions like alternate styles check, information on next
in-date, consultative selling and in-store shop floor enhancements improve and
strengthen the image of the store and store personnel within the customers’
mind. Mobility in the hands of customer can also enable him to quickly shop
yet pick the best-selling items in the retail store as per his personalized wish list
via a built-in store navigation application in his very own smartphone. Fashion
merchandize can be given a 360-degree view and an augmented reality experience,
to make the customer feel the experience of owning the wished merchandize in
a matter of seconds.



‘Retail Supply Chain’
Supply chain promises to be the next improvement area, where next age
smartphone applications can be leveraged to obtain real-time insights into
warehousing and distribution operations. Accuracy of every pick operation can
be improved if “guided picking” can be made a reality. Field force consultants
can be suggested the best possible route to deliver customer orders and pick
merchandize at intermediate locations thus optimizing every route traversed.
Quick insights to replenishment patterns would make supply chain managers
more agile and ensure availability of the right merchandize, at the right locations
and at the right time.

‘Retail Enterprise’
Mobile applications are constantly finding their way into smartphones of senior
and middle management corporate executives who increasing use their mobile
phones as a smarter medium to know their business operations. Smartphones
can also be programmed to present a list of reasons or ‘root causes’ pointing out
to a dip in sales or margin or merchandize out-of-stock scenarios during times of
seasonal rush. Buyers and merchandizers would then walk into a supplier review
meeting with just their iPad where they can discuss the supplier performance
in comparison to other best in class suppliers for the same category. CRM and
marketing teams find mobiles as the fastest channel to reach a customer and
get his attention in the minimum possible time span to pass on personalized
promotions/ mobile coupons to sustain customer loyalty.

Retail Connect – HCL Mobility Solution for
Retailers
Retail organizations need partners who possess knowledge, expertise and
personnel working on multiple mobile platforms, tools and technologies to assist
in mobile enablement of key strategic business processes and thereby achieve
their organization goals.

Retailers and consumer packaged goods manufacturers carefully plan their
new product introductions as well as their pricing and promotions policy. They
allocate store space, production, and transportation capacity and optimize their
merchandize mix, devising intricate schemes for joint advertising, offers and
displays but fail to execute a sell-through plan. It is not technological complexity,
but the innovation and usability factor in a mobile application that creates a
competitive differentiator for organizations.



Sales Force
Dashboards Automation
Mobile Portals (Store/Corp.) Task & Service
(Enterprise) Management

Product Virtual
Guide Reality
Workflow Customer
Customer Order
Management Experience Planogram
Capture

Mobile Order & Inventory
Websites Management Mobile
Store Coupons
Distribution
Navigator Management

Track’n’
Trace Store
Locator

Packaged
Enterprise Mobile
Apps Payments

Corporate Supply Chain Store Consumer

Key Solution Features
Mobility Centre of Excellence

• Alerts – These would improve operational performance of store managers,
reducing the waiting time for pending approvals. It also keeps the store
manager and colleagues informed on real-time production needs and also
interact with one another. It has the ability to readily indicate out-of-stock
data and attend to real-time replenishment. This can also lead to enhancing
customer experience with location-based services.
• Store performance dashboards – These dashboards will enable the store
manager to monitor store traffic/ sales in real-time and provide EOD
snapshots in a single view. This provides the capability to measure performance
in multi-dimensional views and attend to employee performance in real-time
insights. Compare actual, forecasted, previous day store performance at every
level of detail within the store.
• Workforce management – This readily matches store personnel availability
to tasks and obtain real-time status of pending tasks. It also provides
instantaneous updates to store personnel with information on tasks to be
completed and approve work force task allocation.
• Planogram – This is a ‘Virtual Store Shelf ’ which can virtually arrange shelf
layouts and dynamically add merchandize to shelf, reducing cycle time in
planogram resets.
• Item/ Inventory Lookup - Identify retail, UOM, variety available as styles,
item location within store, current stock on hand, nearest replenishment
center and PO ETA date. It obtains real-time monthly or weekly price history
for a chosen item and provides multi-channel inventory visibility.
• Mobile POS - This will have a unique customer-based log-in and NFC-
enabled mobile coupons. This would enable up-sell and cross-sell across
channels, improve customer experience by avoiding long queue waiting time



and complete the sale on floor. It also provides the ability to modify the list
of merchandize in an unbilled sale transaction.
• In-store Navigator - This will enable the store colleague to help the customer
in visualizing the location of the preferred merchandize and provide the
ability to identify the merchandize as per a customer’s wish list. This has an
integrated ‘Alerts’ functionality which would enhance the customer experience
at the store.
• Corporate Dashboards - This would provide corporate performance on-
the-go in one swipe, the capability to drill down to region/ district/ state/
store and also have role-based performance for corporate users and provide
a comparison with the last year data.
• Vendor Performance - A key benefit would be performance view of the
multiple measurements related to partners and effective periodic vendor
reviews. Compare the vendor performance to other vendors, giving a
consolidated view across partners and specific vendor performance across
the timeline.

Why Retail Connect?
• Provides a truly convenient shopping experience - Stores need to be
designed to create an environment that is easy to shop and provides customers
with the necessary tools, information and services required to make an
informed and confident purchase.
• Store Performance - Retailers are challenged between the demanding and
divergent expectations of improving customer service and managing costs.
An effective store management strategy can drive cultural change by adopting
technology and putting the store managers back on the selling floor, better
organizing store workflows and simplifying the buying process.
• Deliver a flexible product/ service offering - Retailers need to be able to
tailor their offerings to meet customer needs across different segments, local
markets, shopping occasions and product categories. The store should be
designed and operated with flexible options that allow customers to shop the
way they want to.
• Retailers must regain focus on the total experience - The market drivers
described above are forcing retailers to re-examine their core value proposition
and how it is delivered to customers. Retailers need to re-orient their thinking
to place greater focus on the total retail experience to differentiate themselves
from their competitors.
• Workforce Productivity & Optimization – Efficient workforce planning
and management tools can help store managers re-deploy their workforce
from departments where they are not needed to parts of the store where
customers are gathered. Retailers are challenged to create a “pool” of talent
that will ultimately be groomed to become store managers. Retailer growth
plans are often eclipsed by absence of talent pool to become store managers
in new locations.
• Proven Capabilities of HCL in Retail & Mobility Solutions – HCL has
an established Center of Excellence (CoE) dedicated to Enterprise Mobility



and have gathered deep expertise in building solutions in the retail mobile
space, including mobile applications for pricing and availability, order status
and product search management, mobile POS applications, cross-platform
migration of mobile applications and developing mobile-enabled websites.
• HCL Alliances & Domain Skill-sets - HCL has strategic partnerships
with all key players in the mobility ecosystem -- Mobile Original Equipment
Manufacturers (OEMs), Telecom Service Providers, Mobile Platforms and
Software Vendors and Enterprises. With 3000+ person years of experience
and 150+ projects under the belt, HCL’s experience is extendable to
customers seeking de-risked and reliable outcomes in their mobile solution
implementations.
To summarize, Retail Connect addresses the following key concerns
for a majority of retail organizations:
• Need for a better communication medium to understand customer preferences
and match customer expectations
• Need to align shop floor workforce and thereby improving store and
warehouse location performance
• Need to drive operational (daily tasks) business processes across the value
chain

Conclusion
In conclusion, Mobility has emerged as a key channel impacting consumers,
employees and processes in the retail industry. Mobility is radically changing the
buying behavior of consumers and is reshaping the retail workplace itself.
Mobility, in the hands of customer, has enabled him to quickly shop yet pick the
best selling items in the retail store as per his personalized wish-list via a built-in
store navigation application in his very own smartphone. Fashion merchandize
can be given 360-degree view and an augmented reality experience, to make the
customer feel the experience of owning the wished merchandize in a matter
of seconds. Such is the possibility to enhance customer experience by bringing
the store to the customer. Leading retailers are already reaching consumers with
mobile services that make them more productive in the store and engage them in
unique ways that transform the shopping experience.
Leading retailers have excelled in significantly improving the customer experience
and streamlining their warehouse operations and inventory processes. Mobility
devices like wireless handheld devices or handheld computers have been utilized
to enable customer service, personalized shopping, retail payments at the
point-of-sale, real-time data and statistics in the field as well as other inventory
management processes, including those with distribution centers.
With the emergence of new and powerful mobility tools, employees can now
work productively from virtually anywhere. Its growing potential to strengthen
organizational performance has moved mobility from the sidelines to the
mainstream of Information Technology. Organizations aiming at maximizing
corporate performance must incorporate mobility as a fundamental component
of their strategic plans.



About the Author
Satya Krishna
Solutions Principal – Retail
Satya is a Retail Business Consultant with 13 years of experience
with global retailers. He has been involved in many transformational
initiatives across the retail value chain involving supply chain
optimization, multi-channel integration, merchandizing
modernization, business process re-engineering and IT strategy
definition. Satya is a Certified Supply Chain Professional (CSCP)
from APICS.
Currently Satya leads the Retail Domain Solutions Group at HCL,
which is responsible for creating new solutions to drive innovation
and thought leadership across the retail business unit.

Sriram Anantharaman
Deputy General Manager
HCL’s Mobility Center of Excellence
Sriram is a key member of HCL’s Mobility Center of Excellence
and brings close to 21 years of cross industry experience. He has
been with HCL since 2002, and has led large distributed teams
and delivered business critical programs for clients globally. Sriram
has handled multiple roles ranging from project management,
consulting services to creating innovative lines of IT services.
Leveraging his expertise around Enterprise Solutions, CRM,
Mobile Applications and Solution Outlining, he has established an
experienced team focused on Mobile Solutions and Applications. .
Sriram has also been a speaker at numerous IT conferences and
events. An evangelist for customer centric IT solutions, he works
with the mobility team to constantly go beyond known technology
boundaries.

Hari Krishnamurthy
Business Manager – Retail Solutions

Hari currently works with HCL’s Retail & CPG vertical solutions
team. He has over 7+ years of consulting experience as a Retail
and CPG Industry Solutions Principal. He worked as the Solution
Architect for HCL’s ‘Retail Connect’ – a new Mobility-based solution
catering the end-to-end Retail value chain. He is experienced in
conducting business analysis and defining business requirements
for large business transformation and IT enhancement programs
on mobility and retail supply chain & multi-channel commerce.



Chinmay Sohoni
Sr Management Trainee – Mobility CoE

Chinmay has an experience of four years in the IT Services and
Software Product Development, majorly in the Mobility space.
He holds a Bachelors degree in Computer Science & Engineering
and an MBA in International Business. Currently, he is an integral
part of the Mobility Centre of Excellence at HCL in roles such as
Business Analyst and Consultant. He has worked on projects across
business domains that include Retail, Healthcare, Travel & Logistics
and Energy & Utilities.

Shobha Gujjari
Sr Management Trainee – Mobility CoE
Shobha has close to 6 years of experience in the IT Services &
Product Development industry, working across BFSI and Telecom
domains. She holds a Bachelors degree in Computer Science
& Engineering and an MBA in IT. She is a key member of the
Mobility Center of Excellence in HCL and has worked on projects
across BFSI, Retail, Manufacturing and Healthcare & Life Sciences.
She was instrumental in devising a consulting approach for mobile
strategy, enabling enterprises to adopt mobility targeting their
employees and consumers alike.


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OUTSOURCING About HCL Technologies
HCL Technologies is a leading global IT services company, working with
clients in the areas that impact and redefine the core of their businesses. Since
its inception into the global landscape after its IPO in 1999, HCL focuses on
‘transformational outsourcing’, underlined by innovation and value creation, and
offers an integrated portfolio of services including software led IT solutions,
remote infrastructure management, engineering and R&D services and BPO.
HCL leverages its extensive global offshore infrastructure and network of
offices in 26 countries to provide holistic, multi-service delivery in key industry
verticals including Financial Services, Manufacturing, Consumer Services, Public
Services and Healthcare. HCL takes pride in its philosophy of ‘Employees First’
which empowers our 83,076 transformers to create real value for customers.
HCL Technologies, along with its subsidiaries, had consolidated revenues
of US$ 3.9 billion (18,334 crores), as on 31 December 2011 (on LTM basis).
For more information, please visit www.hcltech.com

About HCL Enterprise
HCL is a $6 billion leading global technology and IT enterprise comprising two
companies listed in India - HCL Technologies and HCL Infosystems. Founded
in 1976, HCL is one of India’s original IT garage start-ups. A pioneer of modern
computing, HCL is a global transformational enterprise today. Its range of
offerings includes product engineering, custom & package applications, BPO,
IT infrastructure services, IT hardware, systems integration, and distribution of
information and communications technology (ICT) products across a wide range
of focused industry verticals. The HCL team consists of 88,000 professionals of
diverse nationalities, who operate from 31 countries including over 500 points of
presence in India. HCL has partnerships with several leading Global 1000 firms,
including leading IT and technology firms. For more information, please visit
www.hcl.com

© 2012, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

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