Retailers that are expanding their global footprints are also expanding their IT along with it. What retailers usually find is that the design, planning and logistics behind new IT deployments are much more difficult to manage than culling the actual technology together. Let's take a look at some of the most important concepts you should focus on as a managed service provider catering to retailers.
Finding qualified techs while keeping labor costs down
It’s difficult enough to coordinate a deployment on a single physical sales floor. How do you scale into multiple locations in an international space without blowing your entire labor budget?
Your focus, as it should be, is deploying your technology — be it digital signage or store analytics solutions — into your client’s stores and growing the adoption of your platforms and services. You need to find people with the appropriate expertise to deploy your platforms, and this is much more difficult than marketing and selling them in the first place.
But keep in mind that elite techs may not even have to market themselves. They’re in such high demand that they move from project to project based solely on word of mouth. You have to catch these people while you can, which most managed service providers simply cannot do alone.
You probably don’t want to be in the field services business. So leave field services to a company that specializes in finding and managing qualified techs for your deployments, anywhere in the world.
The bottom line: The people make the difference in your deployments, not your tech.
Deployment logistics
It’s not enough to determine what tech retailers need to be installed. The platform doesn’t matter if you don’t plan for it. And if you don’t plan for it, it won’t work.
Retailers put the onus on managed service providers to figure out the design of deployments. And there are many questions that you may be overlooking as you concentrate on deploying your technology:
- Are there any unique aspects to the store(s) to which you’re delivering?
- How long should the new equipment sit in the store before installation?
- Is your installation script 100 percent complete and accurate?
- How will legacy equipment be disposed of?
- What do you do with the equipment packaging post-installation?
- Have you established a deployment help desk that’s available 24/7/365?
Just like you’d design a house you’re building, you also need to design your deployment.
Regulations specific to your expansion
Regulation is perhaps one of the biggest challenges of international retail IT deployments. The hoops each country wants you to jump through to do business can get frustratingly specific. They are also very different from each other, and some territories do not work well with others. Depending on the location of your supply chain and market, you may need a precisely directed solution that technology alone cannot solve.
Technology is now improving faster than human productivity. As time goes on, it will be much easier to market and sell your solutions and much harder to find the people to install it. A partner like Kinettix can help identify and manage the resources that you need for an optimized IT deployment in the international retail space.
