ematical and algorithmic back- ground. There are three aspects critical for Indian retailing at this stage: One, assortm
Industry Connect
‘INNOVATE OR PERISH’ Girish Rishi, CEO, JDA Software, Inc., on helping retailers delight customers through future ready, smart value-chain transformations 1. Tell us something about JDA and its vision? JDA is an end-to-end supply chain software solutions company and that does mean something in supply chain. We’re the only company that serves the entire value chain from manufacturing, and third party logistics to retail. We’re noticing that conventional roles i.e. manufacturer builds, third party logistics delivers and retail sells are getting morphed. Manufacturers are becoming retailers or they have a retail muscle they’re developing. Retailers are becoming providers, going further into the supply chain, and third party logistics companies are venturing beyond their confines. JDA’s vision continues to be to respond to demand signals at an individual customer level, snapping through the supply chain, delivering products in the most expeditious manner. We’re a very simple company: Over 90% of our employees are math, operations research, or technology experts. The team solves workflow problems, and along the way, customers buy the software. So we don’t lead with software, we lead with workflow transformations in supply chain and demand chain, and yes, we have capabilities in software and consulting, that customers buy.
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We are the only company named as a leader in all five of Gartner Magic Quadrants on supply chain and retail merchandising year after year; JDA is truly a cutting-edge technology company today in every sense. 2. What kind of conversations are retailers in India having with JDA? The Indian market is the one of the most diverse markets we operate in and that plays to JDA’s strengths, because of our mathematical and algorithmic background. There are three aspects critical for Indian retailing at this stage: One, assortment—what retailers carry, how they carry, what makes it to their virtual or physical shelf; Two, inventory visibility—do retailers have a line of sight to what is available? Three—this is more strategic from a network standpoint—where do retailers place their warehouses, and how are they operated? In the last couple of years, the discussions have been more about going omni-channel and the maturity of IT systems towards offering a better inventory visibility, making sure that retailers have a line of sight across all channels they are present in.
We work with large and medium size retailers in the formal sector focussing on driving value to their business processes. When we work with Shoppers Stop, Aditya Birla Retail and Trent, what we hear from these customers is a focus on cost of ownership. These are customers who outline major capital expenses on stores, warehouses and the digital media. What they want to make sure is that their information systems are constructed for the future and are driving the value to the demand chain that they need in a snap. They are also looking to effectively compete with e-commerce players by focusing on technologies that will help them streamline their data and drive consistency across channels, from planning to execution. 3. Considering India’s diversity, what are you doing to understand the market? It starts with empathy—if you don’t know the nuances of the local market, you can have challenges. This is where our 2000 employees in India empower us with the required insights. Our employee base here that supports product development and services, not only has deep domain knowledge
Industry Connect
but also has a good understanding of the subtleties of regional business needs and expectations. It helps when we hire people who have worked in the industry as product managers, business consultants, functional architects and user experience designers. This workforce with their familiarity and know-how of the Indian market provides us with an edge. 4. What’s your take on the changing focus on customer centricity in retail? Today, customer centricity is moving from the front-end to the back office—right from planning, all the way to the execution one needs to keep the customer at the centre. However, customer centricity is not new to retail. What’s new are the two aspects that are groundbreaking. First is the technology building blocks like Machine Learning available today that are creating differentiation for retailers, on the physical, and on the virtual front. Second is the fact that, while merchandising and assortment continues to be a unique capability, no longer can a retailer say that he is the only one who carries a particular item, since goods are available through multiple channels. Together, both present an opportunity as well as a challenge for retailers in terms of customer centricity. Supply chain plays a pivotal role here. 5. How so? Today, supply chain is really a demand chain that helps fulfil
Girish Rishi, CEO, JDA Software, Inc. customer needs. For instance, we announced a partnership with customer science company Dunnhumby. This will give us access to their consumer insight, buying behaviour, and preferences that we can bolt to our category management offering and make that available to retailers. This helps them decide what to place on the shelves and plan the planogram based on customer preferences. 6. How will Internet of Things (IoT), Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI) impact businesses and consumers? I’ll give you a simple example. Saturday mornings I go for coffee to a particular coffee shop. When I get in my car, look at my phone, it says 8 minutes to my destination, without me asking it. The phone has picked up my behaviour pat-
tern. The capability to make choices across channels based on behaviour patterns is a powerful output of AI, both for consumers and enterprises. At JDA, we’re building those capabilities into our software. For instance, we take shopper insight from Dunnhumby, apply data science to target customers better, providing convenience to them—right product at the right time. This is where AI comes in handy and has a huge impact on retailer margins. Being able to use data to predict spikes in demand by mining information on customer preferences, weather, social sentiment, and so on, will be hugely beneficial to the end consumer. Lowering out-ofstocks can never be a bad thing. At the same time, using this data to manage production levels to reduce obsolescence, is not only
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Industry Connect
economical but also has a direct impact on the environment. So the initial impact of AI/ML should really be embraced as it will make us run supply chains like we have not been able to before. 7. The common apprehension among retailers when investing in technology is that it will change soon... Software as a service (SaaS) is a great assurance for the customer, where one can buy, upgrade, get more capabilities to the software, versus a one-time buy. It enables one to stay contemporary on an ongoing basis, and that’s the fastest growing modality for JDA as we engage with customers. SaaS and Cloud also partially respond to the price sensitivity that customers may have. Couple that with self-learning, self-healing supply chain with repeatable patterns, and you get a powerful capability that wasn’t available to a retailer in India three years ago. 8. Tell us about your emphasis on innovation. Are you working with start-ups on this front? There has never been a time like today in retail, globally or within India. In the next two years, the entire Indian retailing sector will undergo massive changes that will define winners driven by innovation. Innovate or perish. At JDA, we are positioned to keep pace with macro and technological drivers to help our customers win.
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“
JDA HAS 300 GRANTED PATENTS, AND OVER 100 PENDING — THE LARGEST PATENT PORTFOLIO IN SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY FOR ANY COMPANY OR INSTITUTION.” Girish Rishi, CEO, JDA Software, Inc.
JDA has 300 granted patents, and over 100 pending - the largest patent portfolio in the field of supply chain management technology for any company or institution. This is a testament to JDA’s long-standing and continuing innovation as modern supply chains move to digitization, real-time visibility, intelligent and autonomous decision-making, and self-learning. We all know that start-ups are an indisputable innovation engine and hence we have global and regional programs in place that support creation of a start-up-like environment. We recently hosted a two-day event called Crystal Ball that provides a platform to all JDA associates to showcase their ideas to the JDA leadership. These programs provide a platform for us to incubate ideas through execution with equal focus on all kinds of innovation: disruptive, incremental or even a process improvement. This not only supports our global innovation drive but encourages the entrepreneur instinct among all our associates. Beyond internal innovation, we engage with the external ecosystem as we recently visited NASSCOM’s start-up initiative and met
with select companies. 9. What kind of market shares are you looking forward to in terms of earning? The ‘JDA 2020 manifesto’ sees us become the providers of the most contemporary technology building blocks like blockchain, AI, ML, and IoT, in the realm of supply chain, growing at very strong double-digit rate across the world, but three times that in India. We have increased our R&D investment by 20% and are hiring top talent from premier institutes in India and other places. We are expecting to see massive growth in the organised retail in India, across tier 1 and tier 2 towns. We’re also expecting to see omni-channel grow very fast and we’re here to serve those needs. Our strength is our culture. We have a very high employee retention rate within JDA. Our ambition is that we become the largest, most potent learning platform in enterprise software space within India. So the learning opportunities we’re offering our associates in technology for supply chain will be more formidable than any other provider in India.
