Retail

Making analytics a competitive advantage

• Retailers who are highly focused on the customer experience are using "big data" for improved analytics, greater customer understanding and customer influence at every point of contact.
• Improved security is necessary for these retailers driven by a large amount of customer data required to link technologies to customers.
• A larger focus on analytics for retailers gives them more time to market for new products, make use of resources more efficient and more accurately anticipate customer needs.

Preparing for future scalability needs

• Knowing what the future holds can sometimes be impossible for retailers who are trying to stay ahead of the curve. Finding the right solutions partner is crucial to understanding what products can update into a stronger, more agile data center.
• Focusing on the customer experience requires speed and agility across the organization, especially in the application of new technologies. Retailers will turn away from infrastructure that is not easily integrated, scalable or modular, due to the focus on cost, speed of deployment, and future flexibility.

Differing digital infrastructure strategy for stores, distribution and online retail

• When choosing where to house data, companies are using different strategies for all their needs.
• Physical retail currently favors the use of in-house facilities, supported by colocation, private/hybrid cloud systems and external hosting.
• In contrast, logistics operations are mostly supported by distributed data centers.

Deploying technology to remove nascent retailer’s silos

• By integrating siloed operations across distribution centers, physical stores and online stores, a retailer can begin aggregating and analyzing the customer-related data to define a customer experience.
• To become more developed and open the silos, retailers need to adopt distribution center technologies such as analytics, IoT to cloud, machine learning and robotics.

How to use 5G’s low latency and high bandwidth capabilities

• Many retailers don’t know exactly how 5G will change their customer experience or bottom line. 5G will allow for the personalization of a customer’s experience in a physical store or online, using analytics about that customer’s behaviors and preferences. The low latency and high bandwidth capabilities of 5G become critical as the volume of data increases.
• 5G is important for improved accuracy within locations. Rather than simply knowing a customer spent time at the mall, for example, a retailer could know that a customer passed by a store location and spent time looking at products in the window.
• Enabled by 5G, augmented reality will become commonplace in the future. A customer could see what a paint color would look like on the walls without opening a paint can or could see if a new couch would fit in the living room before making the purchase. With these immersive experiences, latency and bandwidth become even more critical.