Zynstra Hybrid IT Blog

It’s obvious to all that the face of retail is changing rapidly, with customers having more and more options of where and how to purchase goods and services. In response retailers are looking to increase levels of customer service and offer a differentiated buying experience. Branch retailers in particular recognize that their key competitive asset is the branch network itself, offering as it does the ideal environment for compelling customer interaction. However, customer interaction today requires an IT infrastructure that can support compelling applications that enhance the shopping experience and integrate the branch and on-line customer journeys.

We wanted to better understand the pressures facing retail branch IT specialist, so the team at Zynstra recently commissioned Censuswide to conduct a survey of retail IT leaders in the USA and UK to determine their attitudes, opinions and state of their IT infrastructure.

Our research showed that while 97% of respondents see IT as a strategic asset in retail branch IT, only 48% said they had the proper resources, support and branch infrastructure to meet their current demands. And when it came to the IT to support an omni-channel customer experience, only 34% thought they had the infrastructure to enable an end-to-end multi-channel experience.

So we wanted to dig a little deeper and find out what were the major challenges IT pro’s face in making these changes.

We wanted to better understand the pressures facing retail branch IT specialists, so the team at Zynstra recently commissioned Censuswide to conduct a survey of retail IT leaders in the USA and UK to determine their attitudes, opinions and state of their IT infrastructure.

It’s obvious to all that the face of retail is changing rapidly, with customers having more and more options of where and how to purchase goods and services. In response retailers are looking to increase levels of customer service and offer a differentiated buying experience. Branch retailers in particular recognize that their key competitive asset is the branch network itself, offering as it does the ideal environment for compelling customer interaction. However, customer interaction today requires an IT infrastructure that can support compelling applications that enhance the shopping experience and integrate the branch and on-line customer journeys.

The team at Zynstra recently commissioned Censuswide to conduct a survey of retail IT leaders in the USA and UK to determine their attitudes, opinions and state of their IT infrastructure. One of the issues we explored was what new branch applications are being demanded by retail businesses

The research showed that a wide range of applications are being demanded by retail businesses, with mobile payment capabilities leading the way in both the UK and US (65%), followed by self-checkout (49%), scan as you shop (44%), click and collect (41%) and in-store customer analytics (37%).

Early last week we showcased our HPE ProLiant Easy Connect solution at RBTE – the largest retail show in the UK. So we wanted to share some of the comments and learnings with you. 

It’s clear that retailers are seeking to raise their game on the customer experience stakes. No surprises there when competition is so fierce. Even more so when you consider that 5 of the top 20 UK retailers in 2008 are no longer in the top 20 today.

The per-capita cost of supporting remote branch IT is historically much higher than that associated with co-located infrastructures. This increased cost arises from the cost of the time and travel needed to get to these remote sites if on-site support is required. This cost is further increased if sites are distributed internationally.

Any IT professional charged with solving the branch IT challenge for their organization is familiar with the pressures that come with the job. Technological advances combined with the need to deliver new business models, new ways of engaging with customers, and uniform operating models are leading to demands for advanced, coordinated IT capability across all sites, no matter how remote or how small.

The Writer - a writing and brand consultancy business - work with organizations all over the world from their offices in London and New York. Like many businesses, their IT had grown reactively to meet the needs of their business and as such was complex, fragmented and troublesome. 

That was until they implemented Cloud Managed Servers from Zynstra.

Struggling with a lack of consistency across your organization’s multiple locations?  You are not alone; in our recent webinar, 67% of respondents stated this as their key challenge when managing multi-site IT.