These findings are in the first ever annual Aldata global retail CIO survey. The study was jointly sponsored with IBM and conducted by Martec International, a retail industry research specialist. CIOs and IT directors in Europe and the US were surveyed in the last quarter of 2008. One important conclusion: retailers are far less likely to invest in areas that don’t deliver short-term Return on Investments.

In looking at logistics and distribution applications, retailers chose real time warehouse management as their chief interest. According to the survey, within the US 84% of those surveyed are already using such solutions with another 11% planning upgrades.

Within the US, 100% of retailers responding to the survey have implemented mobile applications, with 16% of them planning to upgrade over the next three years. By contrast, of those surveyed abroad, 62% have implemented mobile applications, with 29% planning to upgrade or implement new systems.

Of retail survey respondents, 30% consider automatic replenishment as the most important optimization and stock management application, closely followed by demand forecasting, at 27%. Within the European community surveyed, 97% are utilizing automatic replenishment applications, with half of them currently implementing upgrades or planning new systems.