In this episode of Retail Right Now, Joe Keenan and Kristina Stidham discus Total Retail's recently released 2020 Retail Technology Report. This fourth annual report surveyed Total Retail’s audience on their current usage of technology (both customer-facing and back-end), current and future spending on technology, how they're making technology purchasing decisions within their organization (e.g., which departments/teams are involved, how long does it take on average, how many service providers do they consider), and what their biggest challenges are when it comes to implementing new technologies within their businesses.

A few key highlights from the survey include:

• Retailers plan to increase investments in technology systems in 2020. Two-thirds of respondents said they will be increasing tech spending year-over-year.
• Technology that helps to enable one-to-one relationships with customers is a top priority for retailers. For example, marketing automation and personalization solutions were identified as the top areas that retailers will be increasing spending in this year.
• Artificial intelligence (AI) is the emerging technology that retailers believe will have the biggest impact on the industry within the next 12 months.
• Integrating new technology with existing systems and solutions was identified by respondents as the top technology-related challenge for their businesses.

For more insights like these, and a deeper look into the retail technology landscape, click here to download Total Retail’s 2020 Retail Technology Report.