Enabling retailers to reimagine business in the new age of shopping

Have you noticed? The retail industry has a new look. The latest generation of shoppers has gone digital, preferring to use Alexa to find and order the perfect product rather than buying it in person. No wonder brands like Amazon Go are taking the world by storm, changing the concept of shopping once and for all.

With technology being here to stay, retailers are wondering about the future. The strong bond between technology and retail is forcing them to make tough decisions regarding their online presence. But is launching a simple e-commerce store enough to keep up with increasing demands?

The answer is no.

You also need to manage the necessary network requirements. An e-commerce store holds less value if its network isn't properly managed. Retailers must address this issue to ensure that their online platforms are profitable.

The biggest network challenges for retailers 

The global COVID-19 outbreak made the trend toward online stores even more significant.

Some retailers started restructuring their brick-and-mortar stores to adapt to the demands of the new age. Rather than calling customers to the store, smartphones and web solutions now bring goods into consumers' homes.

While this might seem like an easy transition, it requires extensive planning. The increased demand for technology infrastructure has left enterprises strapped for IT resources, especially the retail organizations that require management of hundreds of thousands of devices spread across geographies.

Even a slight setback in business-critical applications can wreck revenues and reputation, causing stakeholders and customers to lose faith. As a result, retailers need to rely on bandwidth-intensive applications that do not leave scope for jitter, lag and downtime.

Additionally, modern businesses are looking to expand their reach. An establishment in one location can serve its loyal customers in another state. However, opening and managing these stores can be daunting since the roll-out of new branches needs to be as quickly and seamlessly as possible.

But provisioning new private circuits, scheduling onsite technicians to install network reconfigurations and policy updates is time-intensive.

Traditional network models fail to support these demands, causing many retailers to rethink their plans.

Empowering efficiency with better connectivity and bandwidth intelligence 

Managing hundreds of connections across diverse locations while ensuring optimal service levels and network operations can seem impossible. But there is a simple solution.

SD-WAN combines broadband, multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) and LTE in a single network to deliver the right level of services. Businesses can leverage SD-WAN solutions to meet their growing bandwidth demands to provide seamless Wi-Fi experiences, including application access and digital signage with audio and video content. Implementing an SD-WAN solution makes prioritizing bandwidth-intensive tasks such as setting up and maintaining an e-commerce site, online training or running an order management software easy for you. It also offers you the flexibility to streamline and balance traffic across various WAN services.

Improving omnichannel experience across your stores 

Delivering an omnichannel customer experience with a streamlined technological infrastructure is the need of the hour, but the execution can be a struggle.

SD-WAN gives you centralized network control to streamline workflow automation processes and operations, such as inventory management, order workflow and sales marketing. An SD-WAN environment also empowers an excellent shopping experience, secures customers' payment options and boosts their engagement with your e-commerce solution. 

Enabling comprehensive network control with reduced complexity 

SD-WAN brings the total network control under your fingertips. Enabled by a single dashboard, the modern network solution lets you easily upgrade software, scale bandwidth and create access policies. While SD-WAN solutions reduce the onsite network complexity, they also simplify configuring new stores by enabling real-time data and application access to make the customer experience more user-friendly and boost revenue.

Transforming security landscape 

Retailers collect and store a wide array of sensitive user information, including financial and personal data. A single breach can cause a massive loss to the regarding customers, revenue and reputation. Traditional unified security methods fail to offer the required level of data safety.

SD-WAN solutions, on the other hand, ensure high-end data security using encryption and tunneling methods.

Managing network maintenance, time and cost with advanced tools

Technological innovations are evolving at a rapid pace. As a result, new network devices and applications are often incompatible with legacy technologies. What follows are slow or dysfunctional network operations, causing an unsatisfying customer experience.

SD-WAN solutions, however, reduce the use of onsite hardware, decreasing the requirement of frequent updates and site visits. Business owners can modify their application processes across all sites using a single dashboard, saving time and money. 

Choosing the SD-WAN solution provider that gets your retail business future-ready

Telekom SD-WAN solutions are tailored for retail brands to take their networking operations to the next level while availing benefits such as easy management, provisioning and centralized control.  

Orchestrated in its core platform, the Telekom SD-WAN team goes an extra mile to closely analyze your retail organization’s requirements and ensure best-suited managed services. As a result, businesses can efficiently utilize tuned connectivity to scale up or down depending on their current scenario.

When you choose Telekom SD-WAN, you also take home: 

1. One-stop shopping where we will take care of everything on behalf of customers from connectivity, SD-WAN platform, branch devices, engineering and maintenance.
2. The best underlay for your SD-WAN, based on our fiber, wireless and VDSL network.
3. End-to-end SLA starting from connectivity performance and availability to SD-WAN core availability to CPE replacement - if needed, all combined in one SLA without compromise.
4. The top engineering know-how of our experts who will design, manage and maintain your SD-WAN network.
5. OPEX as a service model with no upfront investment for customers .
6. No maintenance and licensing issues as our experts are taking care of all components of the SD-WAN.

Telekom is happy to provide you with the right experts and to answer your questions about planning, implementation and maintenance for your digitization plans. Let’s get ready for the new generation of shoppers and the retail landscape of tomorrow together!