The retail industry poses significant challenges, stemming not only from the ever-changing technology landscape but also from formidable competitors like Amazon and macro-level obstacles such as the Covid-19 pandemic. These unpredictable hurdles will endure, emphasizing the imperative for retailers to be adaptable in their approach.
For small businesses, we can see these challenges reflected in industry statistics. According to a study by LendingTree, 69.6% of retail businesses fail within the first five years — the most out of any industry. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20 percent face failure in their first year, and then the percentage jumps to 50 percent within the first five years.
Large organizations face significant challenges, too. In 2023 alone, big retailers such as Bed Bath & Beyond and Party City declared bankruptcy. They join a long list of failing retailers, which include legendary brands like Sears and David’s Bridal.
To survive in this precarious industry, businesses must embrace new technology in retail that can deliver exciting and innovative customer experiences, as well as more efficient ways of operating. One of the most critical areas emerging in retail technology is managed SD-WAN.
Read on to discover the role of managed SD-WAN in retail and why you should consider it in your business.
Managed SD-WAN for Retail: How Technology is Changing Retail
From the explosion of e-commerce to engaging in-store retail experiences, how shoppers interact with retail brands today has changed drastically. Even physical store experiences are now enhanced with retail store technology like augmented reality (AR) and indoor positioning systems (IPS).
All these retail technologies require a strong network infrastructure to back them up. This is where managed SD-WAN for retail comes in.
SD-WAN is a networking technology that simplifies managing and operating a wide area network (WAN) by leveraging software-based controls and virtualization techniques. It uses these to centrally manage and configure network devices, such as routers and switches, thus allowing retailers to define policies and prioritize traffic based on business needs.
Managed SD-WAN is a big leap from the traditional Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) connections used in older WANs. These legacy approaches don’t have the agility and flexibility required for today’s dynamic retail environments. Managed SD-WAN optimizes data transmission performance, making it ideal for retailers with multiple locations.
Here are some of the main benefits of using managed SD-WAN for retail:
Standardized Network Performance Across Retail Locations
One major benefit of managed SD-WAN is that it helps you deliver consistent network performance across all your locations, ensuring that technology in retail stores operates reliably and efficiently.
This is important because shoppers today expect a seamless experience across all touchpoints, whether online or offline. For example, having a responsive e-commerce site but a slow in-store digital experience would still hurt your brand.
Managed SD-WAN addresses this through centralized management. This allows administrators to define and enforce policies across all locations, ensuring consistent configuration and behavior in the entire network.
Faster Internet Connections and Higher Bandwidth
Managed SD-WAN can improve internet speeds and bandwidth by optimizing network traffic efficiently. Managed SD-WAN continuously monitors the performance of available network links like MPLS, broadband, and 5G connections. It evaluates factors like latency, packet loss, and bandwidth capacity. Based on these real-time assessments, SD-WAN dynamically selects the best path for each traffic, ensuring they take the most optimal route.
Managed SD-WAN also employs load balancing. The system can distribute traffic across the network, balancing the load to prevent congestion and bottlenecks that slow everything down. SD-WAN can also optimize the traffic itself with techniques like compression and deduplication. These approaches reduce the amount of data transmitted over the network, effectively increasing available bandwidth and speeding up data transfers.
These strategies result in faster response times for critical applications, higher transmission speeds, and bigger bandwidth.
Better Performance for Cloud Solutions like Apps and VoIP/UC
Managed SD-WAN is critical for delivering faster response times, reduced latency, and reliability to cloud-based solutions. This is even more crucial for software that demands real-time responsiveness, such as Voice over IP (VoIP), teleconferencing platforms like Zoom and Contact Centers.
Managed SD-WAN can achieve this through traffic prioritization. This functionality assigns different priority levels to various types of network data based on their importance. SD-WAN can recognize and categorize data flows and then apply Quality of Service (QoS) policies to ensure that critical traffic receives preferential treatment over non-essential traffic.
For example, an SD-WAN will prioritize voice packets, as any latency or delay will cause the call quality to drop dramatically. In contrast, an email doesn’t require real-time performance and can thus be put lower on the list.
Unparalleled Security
Managed SD-WAN’s centralized management also allows you to apply policies and techniques to help enhance network security further. This makes a retail business much more resilient to hacks and breaches, even if thousands of public devices are connected.
One key way is through secure segmentation. Managed SD-WAN can divide the network into virtual segments. Doing this helps isolate critical data and applications (such as the database) from other parts of the network, reducing the potential attack surface in case of a breach.
Many SD-WANs also employ a zero-trust security model. In this setup, every user and device is considered untrustworthy until proven otherwise through authorization and authentication. This is vital for protecting your network from being hacked with stolen credentials.
But it’s not just limited to that. Managed SD-WANs have a number of other security technologies like Firewall as a Service, encryption, intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS), and content filtering. And when the SD-WAN executes these protocols seamlessly, it gives your retail store network unparalleled security.
Enhanced Customer Service
Ultimately, managed SD-WAN is about faster network performance that delivers fantastic customer service. For instance, SD-WAN technology can prioritize data traffic to POS systems like Shopify and Square. Customer-focused prioritizations ensure that customer interactions receive sufficient bandwidth and low latency, resulting in high-quality, uninterrupted communication and positive experiences.
Some managed SD-WAN solutions have advanced customer service features, such as MetTel’s Wi-Fi analytics. This helps you analyze customer behavior and preferences, giving you insights to give them a tailored experience.
Managed SD-WAN can also power your backend operations so that you can deliver your product or service much faster and more efficiently. A great real-world example is Signet Jewelers, a company with over 3,000 store locations. They use MetTel’s managed SD-WAN platform to help deliver real-time performance to their support centers, data centers, cloud environments, and stores. Furthermore, MetTel’s managed SD-WAN also provides real-time analytics for their inventory, ensuring that their products get to customers on time. Signet’s VP of IT Service Support, David Coulson, said, “With this foundation, we’re nimble and supporting our business and delivering great new in-store experiences for our guests.”
Better Network Visibility
Managed SD-WAN’s centralized management provides an interface that allows administrators to oversee and control the entire network from a single dashboard. This gives you unprecedented visibility across all aspects of your retail network, including real-time monitoring metrics like packet loss, latency, and bandwidth utilization.
As discussed earlier, managed SD-WAN can also identify different types of network traffic based on the applications used. This visibility enables administrators to understand how various applications consume network resources, allowing them to balance and prioritize them accordingly.
Ultimately, visibility is critical because it empowers you to proactively monitor, manage, and troubleshoot your retail network. This leads to faster issue resolutions, better resource allocation, more informed decision-making, and a better customer experience.
Cost-Effective Solution
Managed SD-WAN is one of the most cost-effective approaches to managing a large retail network. That’s because it allows you to leverage cheaper internet connections like broadband instead of relying on the costlier MPLS.
Managed SD-WAN can reduce your IT and network costs dramatically. Centralized management and automation features can simplify ongoing maintenance tasks, so you don’t need to hire as much staff. Plus, managed SD-WAN allows you to scale your network easily without large equipment or infrastructure investments. There is no cash outlay with OPEX pricing and integration of existing equipment. If the organization is growing, managed SD-WAN enables quick deployment of new locations with streamlined provisioning and automation policy management for all branch gateways with easy-to-use business rules.
Improved Uptime and Availability
Managed SD-WAN is vital for making your network available 24/7. This is critical in the retail industry, where customers expect to be able to shop online and access your brand any time of the day.
Managed SD-WAN achieves this through redundancy. It pools different connection protocols (like 5G and MPLS) from multiple service providers. When one fails, the SD-WAN can rapidly reroute traffic to another functioning service provider. This quick network recovery reduces downtime, minimizing the impact on business operations.
Many SD-WANs also monitor network performance in real time. This enables them to spot potential network failures early before they become a problem.
Enhanced Connectivity
Managed SD-WAN simplifies branch management by enabling individual stores to connect to the main network easily. For instance, they can easily send daily sales data to the central server for analysis or archiving.
And it’s not just limited to store computers. Managed SD-WAN supports Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity on devices, such as smart shelves and beacons. These technologies can gather data and improve store operations seamlessly. Plus, it provides fast and reliable Wi-Fi connectivity for shoppers to interact with your in-store technologies.
Power Your Retail Tech with MetTel
MetTel’s managed SD-WAN services have the track record and experience to deliver a powerful managed network infrastructure for powering retail innovation technology. We have the accolades to back it up, including being named a 4X Leader in Gartner’s 2023 Magic Quadrant for Managed Network Services.
Interested in learning more about our retail technology? Contact us today to learn more.