Cisco to facilitate cross-selling of financial services in retail sector

The $30-billion networking company, Cisco, is looking at providing solutions through its ?intelligent retail network? (IRN) to support cross-selling of financial services in the retail sector. ?A lot of cross-selling of financial services like insurance, mutual funds and housing loans are expected in the retail sector. We are currently in talks with the Future Group to provide them with our IRN solutions to support the same,” said Patrick Mathias, vice-president-enterprise, Cisco Systems. People visit malls in droves today, and to provide such services, financial players do need information about potential customers, especially their background and purchasing capacity.

According to Mathias, Cisco?s intelligent retail networking solutions, consisting of online connectivity, radio frequency identification (RFID), unified communications integrated across data, voice or video, digital signage and IP telephony, will help retailers acquire customer-centric information, like how frequently a customer visits a mall, what things she purchases regularly and how much she spends at the mall. All these get updated automatically in the central data center, the moment she enters the mall. This will also enable the retailer to effectively connect the stores and supply chain to the central data center in order to make all information available to the store executive as well as to the business executive. At the same time, technology ensures that the customer gets the right information through the central signage system. Cisco?s technology will enable retailers to do this without making any changes in their current system, says the company.

Only 3% of the $300 billion retail industry is organised and therefore, there lies a big opportunity and challenge for Cisco, says Mathias. ?We are expecting a $30-50 billion opportunity in the retail business, in the coming financial year,? he further adds. According to SSKI Research, the market size of retail credit disbursements in India is expected to be Rs 2,83,000 crore for the next financial year.