Retail Business Continuity

3 Critical Steps to Retail Business Continuity

How IT Can Help Make It Happen

Retail business has always been a fast-moving, often-changing industry. Today, change isn’t being driven by new fashion styles or popular toys. Instead, the biggest changes in the retail center on the very nature of where, when and how products are purchased.

The traditional brick-and-mortar retail model has morphed into a hybrid approach that combines physical stores, e-commerce, and virtual showrooms—all in a 24/7 time frame. In today’s retail environment, the “store” is never closed. As a result, retailers must fortify their efforts to ensure that their business systems are always operational for all internal business users and all consumers—wherever, whenever and however they want to buy. Increasingly, retail functions are shaped and driven by digital technology, creating a heightened need to support the digital lives of retail buyers and workers across a wide range of devices, applications, and services. If retailers fail to align access to their systems with constituents’ digital lives, they will find themselves in an untenable situation. This post discusses why IT availability and business continuity are critical to digital life in today’s retailers, and to the digital lives of buyers around the world.

Digital Life-Retail Business

Digital transformation is changing how retailers do business, just as it has changed the way consumers buy goods and products. No longer are consumers tied to aging retail models built around physical stores, either in a downtown shopping district or a sprawling mall environment. Continue reading →