![[Interview] Roberto Castro, sales manager at UK-based Exponential-e](https://www.theretailbulletin.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Epo.png)
[Interview] Roberto Castro, sales manager at UK-based Exponential-e
Focusing on the boring essential infrastructure
Ever increasing levels of digital activity in-store, which is boosting efficiency and the customer experience, is leading to greater recognition of the underlying technology that helps power such applications.
Although Roberto Castro, sales manager at UK-based Exponential-e, says his company does the “boring infrastructure that people don’t see” he knows that the solutions it delivers are absolutely essential to retailers and hospitality companies powering technology across their outlets and warehouses.
The company supplies internet networks, unified communications solutions, cloud services and cyber security tools to as many as 9,000 multi-site operators including Liberty department store in London, Cancer Research’s 600 stores, The Ritz Hotel and Fuller’s portfolio of pubs.
Never Miss a Retail Update!Robust underlying connectivity
For LAN (Local Area Networks) and Wi-Fi he says there is an increasing uptake across all market segments – high street stores, e-commerce, pubs and bars, restaurants, event venues, and hotels – as companies acknowledge they are running a growing array of essential services that requires robust underlying digital connectivity.
Within warehouses operated by the likes of Graze he cites the need for the pickers of goods to be armed with scanning devices that can operate in real-time otherwise they could be penalised for slow picking that can impact their performance-related pay. For this to take place in real-time Castro says the network needs to link the person to the application running in the cloud.
At venues such as the London Stadium he says all the turnstiles are connected to the cloud as they need to be able to process thousands of tickets in milliseconds otherwise serious queuing problems could occur. At the Royal Albert Hall some of the key events are broadcast live and this requires the infrastructure to support the secure transfer of this rich, data-heavy, content.
Within hotels there are particular bandwidths for the Wi-Fi to be delivered to each guest and with greater demands for in-room streaming there have been greater pressures on the requirements and resilience of these services. Booking systems are also increasingly reliant on cloud-based services that have been outsourced to third-party suppliers. For retailers the widespread move to outsourcing to SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions has boosted the need for each individual store to be connected to a variety of systems in the cloud.
End of proprietary solutions
“We need to connect our customers to all these different solutions. Historically a retailer would have had proprietary systems and some still do but it requires knowledge of hardware and governance [rules]. Over the last 10 years lots of SaaS applications have appeared. New players have emerged with clever solutions,” says Castro.
He cited the video chat tool Hero that connects online customers with in-store experts. “There has been an explosion of these types of solutions in the cloud. Lots were driven by Covid-19 when retailers wanted to enable these experiences,” he explains.
This desire to deliver improved experiences is also prevalent in-store with employees increasingly kitted with devices that can pull information from the cloud about products and the shopping histories of customers they are serving. The use of AI will further boost the adoption of such initiatives.
P0wering retail media networks
To power these solutions Wi-Fi is essential and unlike in the old days these service have to cover all parts of the physical space and not suffer from poor connectivity in the corners of the store. The rise of Retail Media Networks, involving digital screens around stores connected to content management systems delivering real-time tailored content, is further pushing up usage of Wi-Fi for retailers.
This requirement for coverage across all parts of the physical space is also recognised by restaurants and pubs where connectivity was very much focused on the kitchen and the tills so orders and billing could be handled successfully.
Again the pandemic has been a driver of change here because working from the pub and café became a commonplace activity and customers needed access to a robust Wi-Fi signal. The use of QR codes for ordering and paying also needed supporting with the relevant infrastructure.
Supporting cashless environments
The need to take contactless payments – both at the till and the table – has also become a must-have service for all venues. This is particularly important for those venues that have gone entirely cashless such as many of the pubs operated by Fuller’s. “It is a critical priority that they can take [contactless] payment, otherwise they are not taking any orders,” says Castro, adding that the move towards cashless is a big driver of demand for more resilient Wi-Fi provision.
The move towards 100% resilience invariably costs more because the infrastructure will have to include a number of back-up technologies. “People rarely buy bulletproof infrastructures just to have it. They have it because it facilitates everything else [in their businesses]. As people recognise that the applications they are running are important then then the money gets unlocked for investment in the underlying infrastructure,” he explains.
Castro says that the story that resonates with retail managements is that cloud-based services are only as good as their networks: “In every market there are unique applications in the cloud but if you can’t access them then they are useless. Trade cannot happen without a robust infrastructure.”
