Indian IT companies to help US retailers during holiday season

Cognizant, Wipro, Infosys and Mindtree are helping retailers in the United States cope with the peak holiday season shopping rush.

BANGALORE: Indian technology outsourcers such as Cognizant, Wipro, Infosys and Mindtreeare helping retailers in the United States cope with the peak holiday season shopping rush and ensure their shopping portals and systems stay robust, three months after surging traffic crashed the US federal healthcare insurance website leaving many unable to log on. 

The holiday season, starting from Thanksgiving in the last week of November and going up to New Year's eve on December 31, is crucial for retailers, accounting for about 30-40% of their annual sales, said firms. Any downtime in the shopping portals during this period could result in substantial losses and long-term damage to their image and perception. 

The period could represent about 30% of sales revenue and nearly 40% of profit for retailers, said Sandilya Gopalan, vice-president, CognizantBusiness Consulting, which supports 14 of the top 30 US retailers and 11 of the top 30 global retailers, and over 30,000 stores during the shopping season. 

"The peak shopping frenzy is not new. But a significant increase in peak sales and selling channels, coupled with a potpourri of IT systems that may or may not have scaled in line with business and operational complexity, and higher customer expectations make it a humongous challenge to ensure a smooth period," he said. The risk is greater these days because of channel proliferation, he added. 

The downtime can affect both stores as well as online channels. For instance, any glitch in point-of-sale systems can annoy customers driving them to shop elsewhere. Similarly, even if the website does not crash, slow response time can push customers towards competing websites. 

"This (online retail) is an emerging domain for Indian IT firms," said Pradeep Mukherji, head of outsourcing advisory firm Avasant's Asia operations. He said after the recent disruption of the Obamacare website due to a large amount of web traffic, managing excess load on e-commerce sites had become an area of focus. 

"Many retailers see visitor traffic going up exponentially online, 20-100 times compared with a normal day," said Radha R, senior vice-president at Mindtree, which is currently working with more than 15 retailers. 

There have been many instances in the past of the retailer's website going down due to increased load, resulting in lost sales and bad press. As a precautionary step, retailers are performing a rigorous check on their operational effectiveness and their ecommerce site scalability and availability to handle the increased traffic, she said. 

While Mindtree expects the full picture to emerge in January after the shopping season ends, early trends show that there is a slight downtrend in store retailing but online sales are increasing, she said. 

Companies, such as Mindtree and Wipro, began preparations for the holiday rush by doing trial runs as early as August. "We have been working with our key customers in retail to ensure their systems work fine during the peak season," said Bhanumurthy BM, senior vice-president and global head (application services and strategic alliances). 

"More and more consumers are getting comfortable with online transactions. Product lines offered and purchased on the web is also expected to increase year-on-year," said Sanjeev Nikore, president for consumer services at HCL Technologies
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