The retail sector in India seems to be on the right path as it is being led by huge investments and technological advancements. These funds are now being used to create solutions with new emerging technologies like blockchain, chatbots, artificial intelligence and machine learning, among others.

According to a new research conducted by PeopleStrong, more than 53 percent of chief human resources officers (CHRO) representing over 500 retail enterprises in India believe that their HR verticals are only six quarters away from embracing AI in their day-to-day work.

One of the major reasons, as observed by around 59 percent of the respondent CHROs, is the absence of seamless flow of data between different HR functions as the information lies in silos and different platforms making it difficult to have a unified view of this data for better insights

Nonetheless, Indian organisations are expected to bridge this gap by 2020.

Both Indian and global HR tech companies have already initiated this journey of revolutionising the way Indian retail enterprises manage people and talent function. Leading the way, PeopleStrong is transforming and advocating growing use of digital aids and has seen major benefits delivered by these transformations in some of the largest enterprises in the Indian retail sector.

• An indication of this development is the fact that 59.18 percent of the retail companies have started storing their HR data on the cloud, with a majority of them replacing legacy systems in the recent past.
• Presently, only 24.49 percent spend more than $10 per employee and another 45 percent of these organisations’ report $5-10 spends which is bound to increase soon as their legacy systems move to cloud-based transformative technology.

Analysing the research findings, Prakash Rao, founding member and VP, HCM at PeopleStrong said, “There is a tremendous potential for this number to see a hike in the coming months. We are already seeing the change in the mindset of CHROs for adopting new age HR technology solutions shifting away from traditional ERPs”

“According to the India Retail Report released last September, India has replaced China as the top retail destination. This has led to an increased global participation, with Indian retail space witnessing a number of big ticket deals. We have also experienced a lot of inbound requests in the HR tech space especially for AI and ML-enabled solutions. In such a competitive scenario, it becomes important for these enterprises to augment their people and talent management competencies by integrating AI into their everyday work. The motive behind conducting this research was to understand HR tech adoption by Indian retail enterprises and map the expected way forward.” Rao added.