Why Retail's Reliance On Online Connectivity Calls For Network Resilience
By Gary Marks, President, Opengear
They say the retail business is all about connections – forming bonds with customers to supply the goods we desire alongside experiences that keep us coming back for more. This really takes on a new meaning in today’s retail environment, though, thanks to modern retail systems enabled by online connectivity. The digital age has handed retailers more capable POS systems, more insightful and powerful management over their inventory and supply chain, more efficient employee utilization, and more data-driven CRM systems and customer loyalty programs. All of these result in superior service and experiences for customers. However, like the proverbial golden statue supported by feet of clay, the foundation supporting these perks of the modern retailer – online connectivity – often hides vulnerability. For many retailers, their connectivity is lacking a level of resilience needed to keep stores running no matter what. Today’s retail businesses must recognize the importance of network resilience and prepare their storefronts to carry on uninterrupted even when primary Internet connections fail – because it’s a matter of when, not if.
Retreating to doing business without functioning networks – for example, accepting cash and managing inventory with pen and paper – is no longer an option at most retail locations. Today, business activity comes to a swift halt at stores where the Internet goes down, and the outages can be devastating. Gartner estimates the cost of network downtime for businesses to average $5,600 per minute.
Perhaps even more damaging in the long term is the strain that downtime puts on customer loyalty. Research on customer behavior in checkout lines finds that one-third of customers have abandoned a full cart when a checkout line forces them to wait over five minutes. And this has a snowball effect: other shoppers see the line and decide to leave, passersby who may have been potential shoppers see the backed-up crowd or the packed parking lot and decide not to enter, and shoppers who go and tell their friends about their poor experience will cause long term damage both to the store’s reputation and its bottom line. In fact, 50% of customers surveyed actually avoid certain stores because of another person’s bad experience.
What makes this worse is that network outages largely can’t be avoided and occur because of circumstances well beyond the affected retailer’s control. Downed lines happen, bad weather happens, ISPs suffer system crashes and outages, and all of these (and plenty more) can knock a retail location offline for an indefinite amount of time. Outages are a fact of life that retailers need to be realistic about – it’s estimated that 9 out of 10 organizations have had to deal with unexpected downtime of critical systems, and a third face downtime issues at least once per month.
What retailers can do to protect themselves from the inevitability of lost network connections is to take a look at strategies and tactics for ensuring redundant connectivity. Failover or failback systems are capable of shifting connectivity to secondary connections. These are often wireless cellular connections that come with a different risk profile so that they won’t be affected by the same issue that has rendered the primary landline-based connection unavailable (like downed lines, ISP failure, etc). Like forging enough connections with a customer to keep them coming to a store even during lean times, failover/failback connectivity maintains uninterrupted business continuity for a retailer even with a primary connection totally offline. And when the primary connection is restored, the network reverts back to it like nothing happened. Customers are none the wiser, and sales are unaffected.
Relatedly, retailers are also helped by advances in out-of-band management technologies that monitor system health and environmental conditions of those critical networks, and can proactively repair primary connection issues before failures lead to downtime. This technology can also alert retailers to potential issues that need attention, and allow them to make repairs to network equipment even when the primary connection is unavailable by utilizing the same secondary out-of-band connection used to keep the retail operation active and online.
Accounting for the frightening costs of downtime for retail locations, more proactive approaches around backup cellular failover/failback connectivity and out-of-band management have grown in usage. Particularly in this age when brick-and-mortar establishments face e-commerce competition, disappointed customers at a location with connection issues probably won’t have a heck of a lot of patience. Maintaining network resilience is an increasingly important part of today’s retail strategy in order to ensure consistent and high-quality customer experiences that keep shoppers happy and inventory moving.
Gary Marks is the President of Opengear, a company that builds next generation smart solutions for proactively managing and protecting critical IT and communications infrastructure.