Business

ADVERTORIAL: The Future of Retail

Transform your network and future proof your business for the digital retail of tomorrow.

05 February 2020

The customer’s desire for valuable and unique experiences is seen as the new `gold’ to attract and retain market share. This industry, as is the trend with many others, is changing and evolving at a rapid pace, with innovation being one of the key success factors to survival. The retail environment in South Africa remains predominately brick and mortar, however the pace of digitalisation and rising consumer demand for Amazon-like shopping experiences is forcing traditional brands to transform their entire organisation almost overnight in order to keep up with the pace of on-demand consumerism. In addition, the ability of smaller retailers to leverage off e-commerce and other cloud services has resulted in greater flexibility, responsiveness to changing consumer needs and an overall increase in market share. The knock-on effect for incumbents is the need to find new competitive advantages through the effective management of customer databases combined with strategic re-organisation of key business units that spans supply chain, operations, finance and even marketing as the battle to win the consumer intensifies.

A key element of a successful transformation relies on the ability to communicate effectively across all areas of the business. In response to the proliferation of communication and connectivity technologies over the past two decades, most large organisations have made substantial investments in their Wide-Area-Network (WAN) infrastructure to ensure that information can be transmitted reliably and quickly from almost anywhere in the world. Over time, this has resulted in complex network infrastructures overladen with legacy architectures, which requires a number of resources and constant equipment upgrades to maintain, manage and secure the network. The cost implications of new technologies, coupled with the risk of low return on investment, are the biggest challenges that many C-suite executives face for balancing the need to save costs and remain competitive by digitally transforming processes and having the capital outlay of the required infrastructure.

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