PAID FOR POST
A tech strategy that frees up staff to ensure a customer-centric business can help retailers achieve profit growth.
The new Retail Week Money makers guide, produced in association with Brother, details the retailers with the fastest-growing profits and makes for fascinating reading.
It is clear that rapid growth isn’t restricted to those retailers offering the most groundbreaking products or customer experience.
In fact, the brands forging ahead are those that have been able to identify a customer need and focus their business on meeting it in the best possible way.
Freeing up staff time to be able to do this is a big part of the challenge and the solution is as much about strategy as it is about technology.
Innovate without copious costs
Technology as a service has revolutionised the way retailers operate, all the way from front-line customer contact, both online and in stores, to back-office operations.
Today, implementing a new sales and customer service channel doesn’t have to mean investing in a new in-house platform, then running a recruitment and training programme to get your team ready to deliver.
It is now an option to bring in a partner to handle it and free up your team’s time to focus on more business-critical issues.
The same goes for back-office IT systems, and printing is a good example of this.
“Implementing a new sales and customer service channel doesn’t have to mean investing in a new in-house platform. It is now an option to bring in a partner to handle it and free up your team’s time to focus on more business-critical issues”
Having a print partner can pay off
For a large, multi-site retailer, with printers spread across a large network of stores, managing print hardware and controlling costs can be a big challenge.
But where hardware management, technical support and consumables ordering once meant a significant investment of time and money, it can now be done under a managed print services (MPS) agreement.
A good MPS provider will be able to work with a retailer, audit their detailed print needs and implement a unified system that delivers reliable, efficient printing, seamless consumables delivery and monitoring of usage and costs.
Ultimately, freeing staff from the administrative burden and allowing them to focus fully on customers’ needs is an essential part of succeeding as a modern retail business. The good news is that innovative technology solutions are emerging all the time to help and, thanks to exciting new procurement models, brands of all sizes have unprecedented access to them.
- Phil Jones is managing director of Brother UK
To find out which 20 UK retailers have mastered their tech strategy and grown their profit most in the last year, read the Retail Week and Brother UK Money makers: the top 20 retailers driving profits guide today.
No comments yet