After the discussions in the first panel of BR’s re:Focus on Retail and Logistics, titled “How did the world change and what really matters today,” the speakers involved took several questions from the audience and the panel’s moderator, BR’s Ovidiu Posirca. The latter wanted to know if investing in new technologies, automatically brings bigger sales in the retail sector, a question he directed at Catalina Niculita, Systems Engineering Manager at Cisco Romania.

“Yes and no,” Catalina started her answer. “Viewed only as a necessity, investing in tech won’t bring bigger sales on its own. But if we look at technology as a way to develop, to access new information and trends, then you can achieve better sales results. It all depends on who makes the investment and who utilizes the new technology. If the IT department needs new printers or a new wireless network, those investments won’t necessarily bring in more sales. But when the IT and Marketing departments work together to develop new solutions which can bring in and capture new information and to promote products and services in a more efficient digital manner, it can definitely lead to new sales.”

Catalina Niculita continued with some examples:

“There are infrastructures that everyone has. If, on existing infrastructure, we integrate electronic labels, for example, without any further investments this can lead to better customer satisfaction and optimization of the data stream and of the actual work employees have to put in the actual stores. This will lead to more sales. Other classic examples, which are already implemented in Romania, consist in targeting various areas, to identify hot spots and create a heat map. When we have the trends and look at graphs we will know where the majority of consumers will be at a certain time of day and we can integrate this data with external sources.”

As a conclusion, Cisco’s System’s Engineering Manager added:

“The mere acquisition of new technologies won’t guarantee better sales results. We have countless case studies showing that when the IT and Marketing departments work together in implementing new solutions, it did lead to an increase in sales. Successful models exist, it depends on us how we apply them and how we can adapt them to the Romanian market, which has its own particularities.”