INFOGRAPHIC
The race to customer
leadership in retail Digital
Transformation
Retailers are racing to
adopt Edge Computing and
customer-facing technologies
to enhance the customer
experience. Vertiv and
global media company,
DataCenterDynamics,
interviewed 50 managers
and executives from the
world’s largest retail
companies to profile
the progress of retail
Digital Transformation.
Retailers are transforming themselves
with new business strategies,
processes and technologies to
support a more consistent and rewarding
customer experience across channels.
This research by Vertiv and Datacenter
Dynamics reveals how retailers around the
world are:
• Breaking down technology silos to create
a more seamless experience wherever
customers touch their brands
• Transforming distribution centres as the
lynchpins in customer-driven strategies
• Improving time to market for new instore
technologies
• Making more efficient use of resources
to drive down costs
• Choosing the right physical infrastructure
to protect new IT assets
The retail transformation is driven by
consumer innovation, through the adoption
of digital technologies. This puts the onus
on retailers to catch up and meet the
demand in and out of store that can only
be delivered by an intelligent IT ecosystem.
of retail Digital Transformation. It showed
some key findings. Edge Computing is
going to grow over the next two years
with companies turning to cloud hosting
for capacity, with a 33% greater adoption
for data centre capacity supporting
stores and a 87% greater adoption
for data centre capacity supporting
distribution centres.
Distribution is king, with a need
for faster customer delivery, lower
transport costs and the expansion of
an online presence.
In the next two years, the data centre
footprints will change, as there will be an
expected 20% increase for online retail,
a 10% increase for distribution, a 27%
decline for corporate activities and just a
0.9% decline for in-store activities.
All of the respondents said that online is
more critical and a large proportion, 91%,
said distribution is more critical, while just
23% said in-store is more critical. Of the
retailers questioned, 26% are nascent,
which means they are lagging in
Digital Transformation. These retailers
are beginning to adopt customer-centric
technology but rely almost exclusively on
the store channel. They are improving
distribution centre productivity and supply
chain control.
While 42% of retailers are emerging,
which means they are progressing in
Digital Transformation.
They are using multi-channel customers
strategies, integrating distribution with
customer channels and adding IoT sensors
and tracking to improve productivity.
And 32% of retailers are developed
and are leaders in Digital Transformation.
They are building omni-channel
strategies and providing experiential
customers interactions.
They are also integrating distribution with
customer channels and using Big Data
analytics, IoT devices, cloud computing and
rigorous security at large. •
The interviews carried out by Vertiv and
DataCenterDynamics profiled the progress
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