Future Group, the Rs 2,000-crore Indian retail giant, is set to invest close to Rs 400 crore over a period of three years to revamp its IT infrastructure, and is in talks with Cisco and IBM to outsource its IT operations.

While Cisco will be creating a wireless environment for the retail giant, IBM will be responsible for all the applications development (such as enterprise resource planning and supply chain management modules) and architecture-designing (the IT backbone) work. The group is in the process of charting out service level agreements with both the companies.

One of the biggest problem the domestic retailers face today is how to reduce the check-out time for customers. This has been a key area of concern for the retail giant. Chairman Kishore Biyani wants a wireless infrastructure or a multi-technology platform that can actually track each customer walking in and out of the store, without having to spend long hours in a queue.

The company is not new to technology. Pantaloon was one of the earliest retail companies to have started a pilot for using radio frequency identification technology (RFID) tags. Some of its retail outlets also experimented with handheld scanner for quick check-out time. Currently, more than 22 outlets use handheld scanners. It has close to 350 IT people.

Source: Business Standard