Retail and the cloud: responding to fast-changing consumer habits

The future of retail doesn’t lie in price reductions or promotions: it lies in the reinvention of how we buy. Consumers prefer to shop online; so much so, that the annual growth of online retail sales is now beating in-store sales by 8 percent. Even if people go to a store, they might order home delivery or choose what they want on a tablet in the store.

By adopting new technologies and moving IT infrastructure to the cloud, retailers can differentiate themselves from their competitors and give their customers new, convenient and secure ways to buy.

Your business can get ahead in the race by embracing change and moving some of your IT infrastructure onto the cloud. By embracing the cloud, your business can provide new, agile and secure opportunities for your company and your customers– all whilst giving your business security, flexibility and agility. Here’s how moving your infrastructure to the cloud can help you protect your customers, as well as offer your business the opportunity to grow.

Modernised infrastructure means secure customers

Your customers are at the heart of your business. Therefore, it’s important to ensure that you don’t lose them to security breaches.

Cybercrime, data theft and fraud are growing issues for the retail industry. According to the BRC (British Retail Consortium), fraudulent attacks on retailers grew by 55 percent between 2014 and 2015. What’s more, two thirds of retailers have been targeted by hackers within the last year. Motivated criminals can steal your customers’ sensitive data and money if your security isn’t strong enough and, as a result, you could find yourself facing serious legal and financial repercussions, as well as losing your loyal customers.

Harvard Business Review finds that ‘89 percent [of customers] expect stores they shop at to stay up to date with the latest financial safety technologies.’ These technologies must reassure consumers that their transactional and personal details will not be at risk of falling into the wrong hands.

By moving some (or all) of your IT infrastructure to the cloud, your business can become more secure as well as more agile and responsive if the worst should happen. With the help of your chosen cloud provider, your company can:

• Implement identity management solutions that allow you to control access to sensitive data, such as customer transaction and bank details.
• Benefit from security across all your integrated apps and devices.
• Adopt behavioural analytics that detect suspicious user behaviour, both on premises and in the cloud.
• Reduce the risk and impact of disruptions and online hiccups with disaster recovery solutions.

More data, more customer insight

Retailers manage huge volumes of data every day, from sensitive transaction data and customer details to inventory and staff records. Without the right platform and tools, your business will not have the leg-room to scale operations and services alongside your growth.

Dedicated servers, whether on-premises or off-premises, can be too costly to purchase and scale. Whilst they are fit for some of your secure business operations, they don’t offer you the agility and flexibility that the cloud can. This flexibility can allow you to manage large amounts data, as well as harness it to seek better customer insights. The more your business grows, the more customer information you can analyse and use for better technologies and services.

Therefore, retailers need to consider finding smarter, long term storage solutions if they would like to keep their business model agile and running efficiently. Getting some of your data onto the cloud can:

• Offer you a wealth of data that you can harness to gain those all-important customer and business insights. It’s not just about storing important information – the cloud can help you use it, too.
• Take away the worry of running out of storage. Many cloud providers offer a ‘pay as you go’ service, allowing you to quickly scale up or down depending on your business’ demands. This means that you’ll only ever pay for the services you use.
• Give you peace of mind by combining cloud and dedicated storage solutions, you can choose where you store your important data. For example, your priceless customer data can still be stored safely on on-premise servers.
• Give you the opportunity to provision enterprise-grade virtual machines, if you plan to scale your business rapidly.

Retailers, embrace the cloud

With the help of the cloud your business can become flexible and agile. This will give you the ability to implement new IT applications and stay at the cutting edge while delivering services that the business needs in a fast and responsive way.

Like the big retailer Marks and Spencer, you may be able to quickly create and manage an entire website just for a single campaign. Or perhaps your business will get the support needed to manage hundreds of quotes in an easy and fast fashion like Watchfinder. After all, as Abraham Lincoln said, ‘The best way to predict your future is to create it.’

Whatever the future holds for your cloud journey, start with a solid cloud strategy. Download our eBook Enterprise Cloud Strategy to help you achieve both efficiency and innovation in all business domains and applications across your entire portfolio.

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