Digital transformation is driving new opportunities and challenges for brick and mortar retail stores, who need to invest in strategic technologies just to compete with the value and convenience afforded to consumers by their online counterparts. Part of transformation includes better leveraging data analytics, creating personalized experiences for shoppers, and restructuring the role of in-store staff.
That all sounds great, but these changes don’t occur overnight; central digital pain points need to be overcome first.
Take a look at the Seven Digital Pain Points in the SlideShare below, and learn more about retail’s digital pain points, and what solutions you can use to overcome them!
Access to Wi-Fi obviously isn’t a retail-exclusive business challenge, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an important service to offer shoppers. In fact, 77% of in-store customers in the US state they use their phones while shopping. A lot of the time it’s to help with product research and buying decisions. In-store Wi-Fi meets their demand to stay connected; it also supports in-house staff, who, more and more leverage devices to better assist with customers and their specific requests.
Oftentimes, retail organizations have multiple, distributed locations, which can be a network management nightmare, especially if these locations and their supporting networks include guest-facing solutions (like in-store Wi-Fi, mentioned above) and back-of-house solutions (like supply chain/warehouse management). Network staff can alleviate the burden of network administration by leveraging a solution with the same operating system, same network architecture, and a centralized management platform.
Data is an undying tenant of digital transformation, and networking solutions allow retail brands to arm themselves with actionable analytics to better understand network performance, customer engagement and track in-house assets. All are mission-critical for the success of retail brands and their stores. Granular visibility across the network, all the connected devices and users ensures network upkeep and accelerates mean time to innocence. Customer-centric insights allow businesses to tailor their outreaches and offerings to their shoppers, increasing relevance (and profits with it). Information can also be gleaned from shopper engagement in-store and its assets. Analyzing these behaviors and shaping them accordingly allows businesses to optimize the in-store experience and its supporting functions.
With the advent of online retailers, customers are being conditioned to expect a highly personalized and convenient shopping experience. There is an opportunity for brick and mortar, as 90% of retail sales still occur in the store, but this will change if customers do not have some level of personalization and value delivered to them during their shopping experience. This is possible through network-driven analytics – specifically location-based analytics and activations – which empowers businesses with real-time awareness from onsite shopper interactions and the ability to send relevant, contextual promotions to further enhance the in-store experience.
For more information about retail’s digital pain points, and how businesses can overcome them with purpose-built networking solutions, check out our Retail Solution Page!
