Cloud First Retail: connectivity from the core to the store

Today’s consumers expect a consistent shopping experience across all channels. In other words, they want relevant, interactive and targeted experiences whenever, wherever and however they choose to shop.

And, once in-store, they’ll expect to encounter mobile and dynamic digital experiences that are both personalised and context aware.

Clearly, doing omnichannel well is no longer an aspiration. It’s become an operational imperative.

But that’s not the only challenge IT managers face.

Expanding in-store technology initiatives – like WiFi – to support omnichannel retailing opens the way to new opportunities for in-store engagement and real-time intelligence gathering.

Everything from the delivery of dynamic content, promotions and messages to nearby shoppers to enabling a mobile-centric retail experience that supports in-store shoppers – with services like product search and discovery.

And, with IoT poised on the horizon, retailers are looking to track inventory in real-time to make hyper-localised merchandising possible.

The move to enabling truly connected stores is already underway as IT managers prepare to enable innovative in-store experiences. From AI powered shopping assistants to augmented reality and gamification, the future of retail is evolving fast.

Predicting what’s coming down the line is no easy task. To cope, IT managers will need fast, flexible network infrastructures in place to handle these new trends and technologies with ease. And that means having the ability to manage their wired and wireless networks as a single unified fabric.

And that’s where a cloud managed network can deliver the control, capacity and bi-lateral connectivity required to make all this work. Enabling truly connected stores that both improve the customer experience – and make day-to-day real-time retail operations more streamlined and easier.

It’s an ambitious vision. But today’s cloud-based technology solutions offer a flexible architecture approach that makes it easy to develop new capabilities fast.

Offering a single platform, managed from the cloud, IT managers now have a cost-effective way of managing every aspect of their infrastructure – from the core to the shop floor.

That means gaining:

• Full visibility and control of all traffic, data and applications across the entire estate
• Enabling secure connectivity across the network – from the branch to the cloud
• The ability to prioritise traffic through the network and manage bottlenecks with ease, without impacting resilience or availability
• Using the best connections available to maximise bandwidth and eliminate over-provisioning
• The ability to spin-up new services and deploy in-store fast
• Connecting data from any and all channels.

At Focus Integration we understand every aspect of the digital retail transformation journey. It’s why we’ve created a 24/7 co-managed solution stack that enables IT managers to bridge the divide between store, data centre and HQ and manage hyper-convergence in stores.

If you’d like to find out more about how we can take your retail proposition to the next level, we’d be only too happy to talk or you can register for our latest webinar: