08 December 2023

Craig Smith, technical account manager, Highlight

Retailers have undergone a huge technology shift where there is now a constant need for connectivity and the management of these networks is more critical than ever.

There are three fundamental components for a retailer’s network: a functioning Local Area Network, an efficient WiFi system, and, most importantly, a router to provide store connectivity. Whilst a service provider will embellish this with lots of additional features, it’s these key services that hold the greatest significance.

Understanding how these components are functioning will enable a retailer to build their own intelligence into how their network and applications perform on a day-to-day basis, helping them to plan accurately and work more closely with their network service provider to minimise issues.

Identifying issues

The process of pinpointing the root cause of an issue can be overly time consuming. It may involve a retail outlet manager reaching out to the head office, which, in turn, initiates multiple support requests, possibly involving the service provider and vendors up the chain, resulting in a prolonged wait for responses before determining the best course of action. This can be disastrous for retailers where every minute a network is down directly blocks sales. By possessing visibility into the services underpinning vital applications, a network manager can identify the source of the problem themselves, speeding up the resolution of an issue.

Who is responsible?

With full visibility, the network manager can respond knowledgeably to any internal inquiries without having to rely on the third party. They are also able to convey to management and stakeholders that, even though external providers are delivering the services, they retain full visibility and can hold the provider accountable.

Visibility of service

When looking for a new provider to support the network, seek one that can clearly demonstrate their ability to deliver what they promise whilst also keeping you informed about ongoing developments. This may sound obvious, but most service providers will work with other external providers or vendors and may not have full transparency themselves on how they are going to manage a proposed solution.

Several of Highlight’s current users had this specific requirement for greater visibility. One was a bed retailer with a series of regional depots supporting dozens of outlets around the UK. By providing their regional depot teams with visibility of the services being delivered, the retailer was able to understand the impact of any network issues and provide proactive support before it had an impact on store performance and revenues. It also enabled the central management team to communicate more quickly and effectively with their service provider facilitating a more open and collaborative relationship with them as well as their own depots and outlets.

End the service provider merry-go-round with rightsizing

Some retailers feel forced to chop and change network providers as soon as a contract expires. This is mainly due to having service level agreements that are either too restrictive or inappropriate for the needs of the customer.

The key is to seek a provider that suits the organisation’s specific needs over the longer term. This can sometimes mean finding a provider that is ‘rightsized’ to their organisation’s requirements. There are different tiers of service provider, from the first tier of very large providers right down to the second and third tier of smaller and more agile providers. If the overall goal is large scale and replicability for the lowest price, then the larger first tier providers have the economies of scale to succeed.
For bespoke or smaller scale operations, there are agile providers that can offer more flexible contracts so that both the provider and retailer can adapt to unforeseen circumstances. The ideal relationship is based on having shared visibility across all services to encourage ongoing and constructive conversations.

What do you need to know?

When negotiating new contracts, the retailer must ensure visibility isn’t sacrificed, otherwise they will never know where and why things are succeeding or failing. No service provider will be able to guess at requirements or solutions if the retailer is unable to coherently tell them what is required to optimise the network service.

Technology is never static, so it is important that the right decisions are taken for both sides, built on constructive conversations. These constructive conversations can only happen if both provider and retailer are speaking the same language, so any visibility solution, such as a service assurance platform, needs to provide a shared view of the network service, ideally with multi-tenant and multi-vendor views built in.