Powerful networks and robust cybersecurity are essential to modern retail businesses.
Technology is critical to the success of today’s retail businesses. It can vastly reduce overheads, waste and shrinkage, whilst driving sales and brand loyalty through positive instore experiences and efficiencies that consumers expect – fail to provide this and the shelf life of your brand will suffer.
Your customers want their needs met on time, on budget, seamlessly provided with choice, personalisation and quality as standard – that’s precisely what we provide to our customers too. We help retail businesses maintain optimal digital operations, adopt new technologies such as IoT, automation and Ai, keep their data secure, enable visibility of supply chains and inventory and deliver measurable efficiencies in costs, time and management across their IT infrastructure. Here, we explain how we mitigate common problems for retail and reduce complexity, whilst enabling digital transformation goals and delivering ROI, fast.
The Impact of POS Shutdown: financial and customer loyalty losses
POS failure brings loss of revenue, but also damages retailer reputations and creates customer attrition – as evidenced recently with the multiple and widespread POS outages in March 2024. 64% of customers say slow POS is enough to make them shop elsewhere with 30% not prepared to wait 3 minutes when POS goes down.
POS systems also have other crucial functions – they must safeguard financial transactions, protect customer data and feed data into inventory and accounting technologies – they can only do this if they are online, operating at optimal speed and secured from cyber criminals.
SDWAN & SASE Solutions’ ATOMIUS SDWAN network technology uses all available networks with a sub-second failover ensuring your business remains constantly online with fast, secure connectivity. It can prioritise your most important digital traffic and is the backbone of not only POS, but the ever-growing number of connected devices used in the retail space.
As retailers you know the importance of price points and ATOMIUS comes in at a fraction of all other SD-WANs on the market, without compromising on the very best technology available today. It is also the underpinning connectivity to OMNIA, our advanced yet affordable network and cybersecurity solution, from our world-class ecosystem featuring such trusted names as Check Point, Thales and Console Connect.
Reducing Shrinkage and Theft: The Power of Inventory Automation
Shrinkage and internal theft are a growing problem in retail, but inventory automation offers a powerful solution. Automated inventory systems track stock levels in real-time, alerting managers to discrepancies, theft or loss, while telematic data can help improve sourcing and ordering, reduce waste and assist supply chain management.
Inventory technology too relies on a fast, secure and robust network – keep it fully operational with ATOMIUS SD-WAN or OMNIA’s scalable standalone components and the ROI is quickly measurable.
Modern Instore Security for Retail: facial recognition
As contentious as it is facial recognition technology is fast modernising retail security. It serves as a deterrent for potential thieves and in the quick identification of known offenders entering stores. But privacy concerns abound – retailers adopting facial recognition must ensure their systems comply with data protection regulations, balancing instore security with cybersecurity and respect for customer privacy.
Our OMNIA solution seamlessly integrates SD-WAN, SASE and encrypted Data Assurance, ensuring your data cannot be accessed or read by cyber-criminals. It connects and protects IoT devices and allows secure access to multi-cloud environments.
Stopping Retail Data Theft: layer 2, 3 & 4 data assurance encryption
Data theft compromises customer trust and corporate integrity. Cybercriminals are targeting retail systems multiple times a day, seeking sensitive customer information, credit card numbers and personal identifiers. The fallout from such breaches can be severe, including financial penalties, legal consequences and even custodial sentences are being threatened.
OMNIA brings Data Assurance encryption technology ensures that your business and your customers’ data is entirely worthless to cyber criminals, as it’s entirely unreadable. And it protects your data both in transit and on the move.
The Future of Retail: Omnichannel and Phygital Technologies
A merging of online and offline channels is growing, as consumer demographics change and mature. Today’s shopper expects a personalised retail experience in both real and virtual worlds, at every touchpoint and across multiple platforms. Retailers embracing this approach are leveraging data analytics into customer behaviours and preferences, enabling them to tailor experiences that drive footfall and purchase.
The bottom line is by 2030 48% of retail consumers will be digital natives who are continually connected – if your retail business isn’t continually connected too these consumer groups will simply shop somewhere else.
To find out how SDWAN SOLUTIONS and OMNIA could help your retail operation, visit them online here.
