Learn From One Retail Case Study How You Can Transform Your Business With Edge Computing Technology
It’s true that new year’s resolutions likely began as religious practices thousands of years ago when Babylonians would promise gods to pay their debts and return borrowed objects. Similarly, the ancient Romans would offer sacrifices to the Janus deity and promise good conduct in the coming year. Today, the practice is much more secular as most people resolve only to themselves to make improvements, which might explain why a very small percentage of those who make resolutions achieve their goals.
However, this focus on ultimate failure overlooks the positive impacts that resolving to do things differently or to make incremental improvements can have on an individual or a business.
While not necessarily motivated by the turn of the calendar, see how one leading global retailer that designs and sells ready-to-assemble furniture, kitchen appliances, and home accessories achieved the following four resolution-like results:
Get Organized.
Like cleaning out the junk drawer in your house, improving operational efficiencies could be a simple matter of taking inventory — understanding what you already have and how it supports the pursuit of your ultimate goals.
This process of getting organized will also highlight areas of needed improvement. In other words, do you really need 25 pens in one junk drawer, or should you relocate some to other areas of the house for faster retrieval and note-taking in the future. That was the case for the retailer mentioned above. Getting organized revealed a need to move away from centralized computing to a more distributed network architecture.
Save Money.
While investing in more computing infrastructure may appear to be counterintuitive or contrary to saving money, this retailer did both simultaneously. Not only did moving infrastructure to the edge of its network improve in-store data processing and the customer experience overall, it allowed the company to minimize infrastructure support costs and avoid accelerating network traffic fees.
Become More Self-reliant.
Like many resolutioners, this home goods retailer sought to take back more control. The process of becoming self-reliant in regard to managing its edge computing technology meant better visibility. With a combination of management hardware and software, the retailer could easily rely on its own resources to ensure maximum uptime. For promise makers and this retailer, alike, self-reliance doesn’t mean never needing help. In fact, it was the collaboration between the retailer and its technology partner that may have proven most valuable.
Reduce Stress.
More equipment in hundreds of locations may seem like more stress, but that’s not always the case when a retail networking solution is carefully architected to business needs. Not only were the retail IT team members able to take the deep inhale/exhale that comes with saving money, they also were able to choose a retail IT solution that saved them headache. This reduced stress or peace of mind may have even allowed them to embrace another common resolution, which is to get more quality sleep.
