NEW YORK -- In today's fast-paced, information-driven retail environment, executives are learning to think "outside the box" and mustering the necessary IT tools to drive the business forward. The IT domain now stretches from the front-end point-of-sale to the suppliers' manufacturing scheduling -- and hits all the stops in-between.
Supermarket IT executives -- along with all industry executives -- are grappling like never before to satisfy customer needs, meet trading partner concerns and beat back competition from other classes of trade.
In SN's annual Executive Roundtable special report, which fills both the Retail Systems & Marketing section (beginning here) and the Supply Chain & Operations section (on Pages 97-101), five of the industry's top IT professionals discuss the most critical challenges -- and potential solutions -- facing the supermarket industry today. The in-depth report also coincides with the annual gathering of IT professionals at the Food Marketing Institute's 1998 Information Systems Conference this week in New Orleans.
