RISNews is reporting on the new IT initiatives top 5 retailers in US have started or are involved in to keep a leg up over their competitors.

The Home Depot (#2) and Kroger (#3) have both leveraged multiple technologies to enhance store operations and processes.  The Home Depot’s most recent IT initiative is a deployment of an IT lifecycle management system from Matrix42. The Empirum suite is being used across all 2,164 Home Depot retail stores globally and centralizes the management of all enterprise networked devices. The Home Depot is using Empirum to increase productivity and reduce administrative support costs. A recent customer-facing IT initiative trial'ed by The Home Depot was a digital signage campaign throughout its Canadian stores. Partnering with RAM Forest Products and MediaTile, Home Depot Canada stores created the “Create the Deck of Your Dreams” campaign which resulted in an increase in sales of deck accessories by more than 50 percent. The campaign incorporated multimedia video advertisement which gave consumers a step-by-step education on deck building.

Supermarket retailer Kroger (which just last month won RIS New’s Supermarket Achievement Award for the Shopper Experience) also is deploying both back-end and customer facing technology to maintain a competitive edge. With a best-in-class shopper experience in mind, Kroger has been among the first supermarket chains to install self-checkout and DVD rental kiosks. On its back-end, in January of this year Kroger began an implementation of a new IBM infrastructure. The infrastructure will enable Kroger to more easily, and more speedily, create new services for its customers. “With this initiative, we will be able to introduce innovative services quickly and seamlessly to improve our customers shopping experience,” says Chris Hjelm, senior vice president and CIO at Kroger.

Number five on the Top 100 list is Target. As with The Home Depot and Kroger, Target is leveraging technology to improve its back-end operations. In particular, Target recently partnered with Swisslog to create and implement a new picking and storage system for its warehouse operations. The system will be designed to minimize warehouse logistic costs while optimizing distribution processes.

A few other retailers on the Top 100 list leveraging technology include: CVS (#9), Federated Department Stores (#13), Publix (#15) and Staples (#18). In January CVS deployed a new merchandise and data management system from Soft Solutions. Federated, which officially changed it’s name to Macy’s this past spring, trialed a futuristic SocialRetailing system from IconNicholson in the Nanette Lepore department of its Manhattan Bloomingdale’s store. Publix expanded its data warehouse with Teradata and implemented BlueCube workforce management from RedPrairie. Office supplies retailer, Staples is overhauling its POS hardware and deploying nearly 8,000 new POS terminals from Fujitsu to its US, Canada and Europe stores.