Cloud migration in retail for business continuity: how to do it right

The retail sector is among those whose Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the leap towards digital, forcing the development of e-commerce and, consequently, of all processes related to supply chain management and customer satisfaction.

This means the rapid modernisation of the activities of large companies in the retail sector - i.e. continuing to make their goods available, despite the difficulties related to the health situation - while following digitisation plans already in place.

The transformation of the sector and the increasing integration of the physical and the virtual shop, with shared management and advanced data analysis of the customer experience is, in fact, an issue that has been talked about for some time and that, if not already initiated, has been considered and planned by most companies.

More sudden was the management of the transition to a hybrid mode of working of their internal employees, not directly engaged in sales processes. The modern workplace was unforeseen and found companies unprepared.

This has opened up potential security breaches and highlighted gaps in the IT preparedness of employees, who have realised how modernising office activities, besides making work more efficient, is also a time for personal and professional growth.

As a matter of fact, therefore, the next big step for retail companies is to bring their internal infrastructure up to the level of the whole sales process and supply chain management part.  

Cloud Migration in Retail for Business Continuity

It is now clear: the world of work will never be the same again. In the next 10 years, when the health emergency will, ideally, only be a distant memory, more than one third of the so-called white-collar workers will work predominantly remotely.

This will not only be the case in large companies, which are better prepared for this transition, but also in small and medium-sized companies in the coming years will have to adopt solutions to enable their employees to work on the move.

This implies that, in order to guarantee business continuity, companies must already migrate collaboration, communication and conferencing services to the cloud; moreover, especially in the retail sector, for the analysis of customer experience data, business analysis solutions supported by artificial intelligence and machine learning will also have to be implemented via the cloud.

Regarding the first point, what employees expect is simplicity, making remote working fluid, through the use of advanced, powerful yet easy-to-use tools available as a platform.

For companies, such a modernisation not only ensures business continuity by migrating to the cloud, but also means less management complexity, reduced paperwork time and increased possibilities for collaboration between employees.

In addition, costs are lowered, and productivity improves. In fact, all indicators from other industries show that with a well-managed modern workplace, margins and upsell sales grow, young talent is attracted, employees grow professionally, and corporate culture is enriched.

Today, SaaS solutions are essential because they meet the need for accessibility of information and working materials, guarantee better problem solving, enable extended team involvement, and facilitate the sharing of skills and experience.

For companies, migrating their services to the cloud also provides greater security. By being able to take advantage of enterprise-grade cybersecurity resources contained in Saas applications, they do not have to fear being in debt of resources, being able to count on very strong elements of scalability and, last but not least, they can cope with the growth phase through recognisable and manageable costs in a flexible and needs-only manner.

In this empowerment and digitalisation journey, Beta 80 Group is able to offer consolidated experience, best practices, Agile approaches and innovative technologies.

A consultancy offer based on the main enablers of Digital Transformation: Cloud, AIOps, Artificial Intelligence for Operations, Big Data and DevOps.