Leader: Retailers, be brave with IT

This week's news about how supermarket stalwart Sainsbury has stumbled in its use of IT highlights a polarisation that seems to be occurring in the retail world.

Other outfits such as M&S and MFI have also had their problems of late, the latter with its supply chain, and it is perhaps supply chain software and processes that are at the heart of most problems.

Anyone who caught mainstream news reports on Tuesday evening couldn't have missed cameras focusing on empty shelves at busy Sainsbury shops - a sin in retail if ever there was one.

Meanwhile rivals such as Tesco and Wal-Mart-owned Asda have prospered over the past 10 years. This publication regularly speaks to the head of IT at market leader Tesco, a company that has grown strongly at home and abroad, getting ecommerce right and even offering voice telephony and broadband.

The tales of Wal-Mart's global supply chain are legendary and it would seem that, while not all Asda's success is down to this - much of the last decade's growth came pre-acquisition and it is teaching its parent a thing or two, by George - clear IT strategy filters through the organisation.

Another retail CIO silicon.com used to know well was at Safeway, a supermarket chain this side of the Atlantic now owned by Morrison's. The takeover meant the exit of that particularly progressive and sensible head of IT. Morrison's, like Sainsbury yesterday, has also taken 'back to basics' approach to technology.

Clearly getting things like pricing and stocking right are key to a retailer. But we can't help feeling that redoubling IT efforts and conquering what are tricky technological conundrums is the way forward. Surely that's something Lord Sainsbury, chairman of the eponymous chain and UK parliamentary under-secretary for science and innovation, no less, would back.