3 Major IT Challenges In Retail And How To Address Them | Parallels RAS
Last updated on April 19, 2020
3 Major IT Challenges in Retail Industry
The last couple of years have been pretty tough on retail, with major IT challenges in retail guiding major retailers to bankruptcy. This is caused not only by the surge of big players in the e-commerce space (e.g. Amazon) but also by heightened competitiveness among brick-and-mortar competitors. As an industry that has generally embraced digital transformation, a lot of the burden to innovate falls on IT.
1. Coping with rising costs
To survive, retailers need to constantly convince customers that their store is where they’ll find the greatest value for their money. Naturally, this would entail launching attractive deals, store renovations, and a host of other initiatives which, when done too frequently, could substantially reduce profit margins. Because these initiatives help companies compete in a cut-throat environment, cost savings should be acquired from other areas in the business.
2. Maintaining customer loyalty
Customer loyalty is arguably one of the, (if not THE), most important currencies in the retail industry. Sadly, retailers tend to do a lot of things that compromise that loyalty — like when they take customer data for granted. Not a wise thing for retailers to do according to the results of a consumer survey conducted by digital security company Gemalto. 64% survey respondents from all over the world declared they were unlikely to shop again with a company that had experienced a breach involving financial data. Clearly, retailers need to prioritize solutions that mitigate the risk of a data breach.
3. Retaining and engaging employees
One of the biggest problems in the retail industry is high staff turnover. In the UK, for example, the staff turnover rate is at a business-crippling 40%. Retailers need to find ways to engage and retain their employees with training, and on-boarding activities in order to avoid excessive (and costly) disruptions. There are many ways to do this, but one of them is to grant employees more flexibility without sacrificing productivity.
These 3 challenges can be addressed by a single solution. It’s called Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS).
Parallels RAS solves the major IT challenges…
…cope with rising costs by extending the life of the line of business (LOB) applications and legacy devices. Parallels RAS can, for instance, run legacy but still usable 32-bit LOB applications on a 64-bit Windows system. It can even run modern applications on old devices. This is possible because of application virtualization and containerization technologies.
…maintain customer loyalty by mitigating the risk of a data breach. Parallels RAS greatly reduces the chances of data loss on endpoint devices because data isn’t stored on those devices in the first place. Secondly, because the applications and desktops delivered through Parallels RAS are virtualized, they are less susceptible to malware, more so if the client devices are just thin clients. And third, because the applications and desktops are hosted in a central location, they can easily be patched.
…retain and engage employees by providing them (employees) the means to access business applications through their phone, laptop, or tablet, from any geographical location. This added flexibility can mean a lot to employees, especially Gen Z-ers and Millennials, who prefer to do tasks on their mobile devices.
References
Retail Dive | https://www.retaildive.com/news/the-running-list-of-2018-retail-bankruptcies/516864/
Infraspeak | http://blog.infraspeak.com/biggest-challenges-2018-retail-operations/
Major IT challenges in retail | https://www.growthengineering.co.uk/retail-challenges/
Center for Generational Kinetics | https://genhq.com/how-obsessed-is-gen-z-with-mobile-technology/
Help Net Security | https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2015/12/10/the-impact-of-data-breaches-on-customer-loyalty/
TechTarget | https://searchvirtualdesktop.techtarget.com/answer/Are-virtual-desktops-as-vulnerable-to-malware-attacks-as-PCs
Parallels RAS Retail Solution | https://www.parallels.com/products/ras/solutions/retail/
