Spending on information technology by food stores worldwide will increase by 3.1% to $15.6 billion

Spending on information technology by food stores worldwide will increase by 3.1% to $15.6 billion this year, according to a new report from IDC Global Retail Insights here.

“Grocers will need to continue to innovate to meet consumers’ needs,” said Leslie Hand, research director for IDC Retail Insights and a co-author of the report, “Worldwide Retail Industry 2010, Top 10 Predictions.”

Overall, the report predicts that despite the sluggish economy, “retailers will launch aggressive technology investment programs to support new business models while reducing traditional IT costs.”

Hand, who previously worked for Ahold in IT for eight years, told SN that food retailers “will be able to make tactical reductions in their IT infrastructure to become leaner in their technical capabilities while at the same time funding some projects to do better forecasting and analytics and provide better customer service.” To become leaner, retailers will look at their hardware investments and “perhaps do more virtualization and consolidation of multiple instances of applications while improving the way they manage item data,” she said.

Applications that retailers will emphasize include demand forecasting, replenishment, order management and price/promotion optimization—those that offer a one to one-and-a-half year ROI, she added.