Retail is the engine that keeps our economy humming, and with that comes the need for near-perfect uptime, positive customer experiences, and technology positioned for consistent day-to-day usage. When retailers are competing for each shopper's dollar, technology can be used as a differentiation tactic to help win-and retain-business.
To stay ahead of competition, retailers have to constantly innovate and remain in touch with changing customer demands. Cloud computing helps retail businesses respond more quickly to market trends and stay on top of technology advances that benefit business. Cloud is a cost-effective platform fueling a seamless experience across the operation and empowering retailers to meet the needs of the customer.
Customers expect a personalized interaction regardless of the channel. However, many retailers operate in a disjointed way due to outdated legacy systems that prevent them from effectively integrating operations such as inventory, shipping, and POS. By moving to the cloud, it is much easier to deliver the seamless customer experience that consumers demand.
Adopting a cloud platform can help retailers remain agile and adaptable to changing consumer and business demands. Subscription-pricing models for many cloud services allow retailers to pay for what they need, when they need it.
A cloud services supplier provides servers and infrastructure, giving companies a cost-effective way to update their architecture without significant investment in equipment.
Cloud computing frees IT resources for other tasks because the cloud service provider takes care of regular maintenance and updates, as well as security checks and procedures.
Effective and efficient communication and collaboration tools are important in any industry, but for retailers-who make their living through successful communication-this is an imperative.
Cloud provides virtually unlimited data-storage capabilities, growing as the customer's need for more storage grows. Resources can be added or shelved in response to growth or a change in focus.
Cloud services provide 24/7 disaster recovery and more consistent security compliance than standalone systems can realistically provide.
To protect themselves and their customers, retailers need comprehensive yet cost-effective network security solutions to mitigate risk to their business and prevent the financial and reputational damage created by a data breach.
Disaster Recovery-as-a-service (DRaas) makes a secure and compliant DR strategy increasingly attractive to retailers. Business data and applications are replicated and stored in secure cloud locations.
Smaller businesses are most vulnerable, 58% of breaches took place at small and medium businesses.
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