One in six Americans get food-borne diseases each year with 3,000 of those cases resulting in death. Food and beverage retailers are strategizing to avoid such risks for consumers while keeping their profit margins intact. A report from IDC urges them to invest in tracking and other technologies.

Retailers must plan now for the IoT because the technology positively impacts top- and bottom-line business performance by improving omnichannel operations and enabling personalized and contextualized interaction with consumers, says a report from IDC Retail Insights.

An IDC MarketScape report from IDC Retail Insights finds that product lifecycle management has evolved to become a central lynchpin for retailers to conduct customer-centric, efficient and effective brand management. The new study, IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Retail Product Life-Cycle Management (PLM) Applications 2012 Vendor Assessment, examines the impact of retail PLM and its ability to improve return on capital and brand equity, while reducing risk. Vendors evaluated in this report include: Centric Software, Core Solutions, Dassault Systemes, Gerber, Lectra, NGC, PTC, SAP, Siemens and TradeStone Software.