Consumers may spend the long summer days savoring pool parties and packing for camping excursions, but for retailers, this is the time to get things in order for the holiday season. There’s plenty to consider about as the seasonal frenzy nears. You may have temporary locations to set up and staff, promotional pricing to promote sales, and novel fulfillment options to help customers get their gifts out on time. While you’re finalizing your holiday plans, this is also the time to carry out essential network and security updates to ensure your infrastructure and systems are ready to meet the demands of the season.
Review your integrations and fine-tune omnichannel and third-party systems
Most retailers rely on multiple technologies to fuel their operations, from inventory management systems to loyalty programs. If you’re looking to elevate the purchasing experience or enhance associates’ capabilities, you still have time to wind up testing the latest technologies and upgrading existing platforms, such as handheld devices, digital signage displays, and interactive kiosks. Partnering with a managed services provider that understands what it takes to configure, deploy, and maintain all this equipment can help you scale your technology early and get you through your hectic time successfully.
Prepare your technologies for temporary or pop-up locations
It isn’t just demand that’s tied to the holidays — many brands have their own seasonal technology requirements, and they come with strict timelines that aren’t forgiving if you experience missteps or delays. Providing the finest potential customer experience requires months of meticulous planning. Confirm the features you want to support across your physical footprint now, so you’re working far enough ahead to complete your preparations before the full force of the holiday traffic arrives. You may need to modify your technology deployments to make new concepts, such as pop-ups and transient locations, a success.
Develop your strategy to equip and train seasonal employees
A crucial area of focus is the time it takes to get a seasonal employee proficient in their position, including familiarizing them with the solutions and procedures they will use. Efficiently completing employee training benefits both the employee and the customer experience, plus it can increase your profitability. By deploying employee-facing digital signage solutions, for example, retailers can abbreviate the time it takes to train seasonal workers. Giving your IT team enough time to make these changes and map out the hardware and software required at each location can help you maintain a tight schedule and avoid errors down the line.
Assess your network for strength and resilience
The network is the backbone of retail. It makes individual systems function and moves data where it needs to go. Consumers increasingly expect rapid mobile commerce on the phone, online, and even in the store. Employees rely on handheld devices to remain on top of administrative activities, as well as to deliver the exceptional service customers want. With an expanded footprint of devices from both staff and visitors, retailers need to verify that their networks have the capacity and optimization tools to handle bandwidth-intensive apps and heavy transaction traffic.
An early assessment affirms your networks are set to perform during peak purchasing periods. To achieve consistent enterprise performance, retailers should consider solutions such as SD-WAN and 5G or other wireless backup to bolster performance, increase reliability, and reduce friction for customers and employees.
Evaluate and update your network security protocols
In today’s cyber threat environment, network security is just as critical as network response and fortitude. Depending on your technology landscape, you may need to secure connected third-party devices, such as product scanners or security cameras, ensure your network is configured to safeguard POS transactions, extend secure internet access to guests, and protect data traffic to and from the cloud. With so much at stake, a layered approach to security is recommended, so that even if a cybercriminal discovers a way around one of your security controls, they still won’t be able to access your network and initiate an attack. Retailers already know how costly breaches and other security incidents can be, potentially exposing sensitive consumer information and tarnishing your brand.
A network intrusion or ransomware attack during the holidays could take stores offline when you can least afford an outage. An expansion of your store footprint — through transitory kiosks, seasonal staff, and other activities that place additional devices and data traffic on your network — creates an expanded attack surface that you need to protect.
While it can sound daunting to implement multiple layers of security, organizations like managed security service providers can provide many of these services and the expertise to get your security posture set for the hectic holiday season. Retailers can also turn to MSPs to manage the deployment and administration of their technology infrastructure to take the uncertainty out of ramping up the holiday digital experience. These partners often provide tools and cybersecurity professionals to enhance your in-house IT capabilities and get you through the holiday season.