The changing face of retail IT and impact on customer experience

By Nick East, CEO, Zynstra

In the highly competitive retail space businesses are using every tool at their disposal to ensure they are able to remain relevant and grow their market share. For many this is solely focused on perfecting the customer experience, especially across channels. For others it is all about cutting costs and optimizing performance.

While these things may not be mutually exclusive, the one common theme is the use of technology to help retailers achieve these goals.

There are a number of trends that have swept through retail, from checkoutless payment, to AR and VR. For the most part these have focused on the customer and improving in-store experiences, however these changes and others are highly challenging to implement at scale, especially in a retail store estate whose technology was built for a different age. Fortunately there are enabling technologies, and these are also having a significant operational effect on retailers.

Pushing retail to the edge

One of these technologies is edge computing. This new 'cloud to the edge' technology approach has been cited by research firm Gartner as one of the top 10 strategic technology trends for 2018. It uses edge-scale virtualization to enable the in-store infrastructure to support multiple applications and appliances without increasing the IT footprint and support overheads. Retailers realize immediate cost savings, while also benefiting from a platform that can be used to roll out new applications to revolutionize customer service.

In practical terms edge computing brings the processing power of the cloud closer to where it’s needed — that is end devices like point of sale systems in the actual store, customers and store operations.

Legacy infrastructure, legacy challenges

So how is this different? It essentially offers retailers the best of both worlds; retailers can capitalize on powerful IT capabilities in-store, while taking advantage of better control and flexibility through cloud based centralized management of IT infrastructure.

As it stands, many store operations in retail are based on a dated device-orientated infrastructure. These devices include hardware such as PCs and fixed POS terminals each running on a Microsoft operating system, and a range of other dedicated application devices or appliances. As new requirements need to be met, each additional application further complicates the management and control challenge.

Each device needs to be managed and maintained. And when something goes wrong or upgrades are required, IT staff will most likely be needed on site. This takes time, can cause disruption to operations and requires a significant investment in IT resource to address the needs of stores, especially in a geographically dispersed store estate.

The age of edge technology  

Edge technology enables in-store infrastructure that can run all the applications retailers need without increasing the physical IT footprint. Applications can be managed and maintained as a software resource, with upgrades and control all taking place remotely. This removes the need for costly and time-intensive site visits and reduces the IT bill of materials. The end result is an in-store platform that can enable the rapid roll out of new applications, which can have a huge impact on the customer experience.

Intelligent automation

The ideal solution here is one that embraces the management of a store ecosystem instead of the traditional approach of managing individual stores. This is particularly effective when used across an entire store network and incorporates built-in intelligent automation.

Intelligent automation enables the management, control and updating of IT across all stores. Think of it as a virtual store where software governs the entire store ecosystem. This approach makes operations significantly more efficient, simplifying and speeding up what would otherwise be complex and labor-intensive IT tasks, while ensuring a consistent, secure IT environment in every store.

Intelligent automation must also be centrally controlled and enable the automated provisioning, patching and configuration of store IT infrastructure across hundreds or thousands of stores. It is this element that delivers the dynamic ability to quickly prototype and launch innovative apps and services at the retail edge. This means fast tracking, from insights to action, and increased agility to quickly respond to changing business needs.

Conclusion

As retailers tackle the challenges of reducing the cost to serve while improving the customer experience, it becomes clear that there needs to be a shift in thinking when it comes to technology.

As it stands, retailers don’t have the infrastructure to effectively support these initiatives. They need to move away from the device-orientated mindset and focus on managing the retail ecosystem as a cohesive whole — using edge technology to help achieve that.