It’s tough out there. Margin pressures, challenging market outlook, agile competitors and internet shopping keeps retailers pushing hard for operational efficiencies and innovation.

Today, we're opening up new possibilities. Who would’ve believed that the ideal of a single, converged network platform running multiple services and functions, including warehouse, back office, CCTV security, RFID tracking, voice, till data, card authorisations and push marketing, is now a reality? With us, it is.

Connecting through smarter communications

Building reliability and resilience into your network is vital. No retailer can afford to lose sales should a promotion create a traffic spike that exceeds available bandwidth to the online store.

Even on the busiest shopping day, vital links to back office and order processing systems must stay operational. Fortunately, these are areas in which our IP networks excel, thanks to end-to-end ownership of our nationwide network, coupled with resilient back up and flexible bandwidth capabilities.

When your connectivity is vital rather than simply convenient, our Managed Internet Access product really scores. It’s a fully managed, symmetric and uncontended service with bandwidths up to 1Gb. For very high capacity applications, we can deliver connections using optical wavelength technology at speeds up to 40Gb. We know you like to think fast.

Stock management: Real time information

Stock management has come of age. Now, with reliable connectivity to all your stores, your stock control becomes real-time rather than retrospective. You’ll always know what’s on the shelves, what isn’t, and what’s moving fast. The result is big cost savings at the warehouse through ‘lean stock management’ and fewer missed opportunities.

Our national VPN, based on Ethernet Solutions or our IPVPN with broadband access circuits, ensure all sites and stores are connected to a single, affordable network. With always-on, high-speed connectivity, your central databases and your tills are in constant communication, ensuring that everyone can get an up-to-date stock picture.

Payment systems: Serving customers faster

Reducing queues at the till has always been a priority for retailers. Always-on connections deliver almost instant credit card authorisations. However, the mounting cost of running connections to every store can be a problem, unless you can run multiple services over the same line. Our IP-based technologies make this simple - a single converged network can run payment processing, CCTV, voice and till transaction applications simultaneously, yet independently.

With a national VPN, based on Ethernet Solutions or IPVPN connecting every store, you’ve the always-on technology to authorise credit card transactions effortlessly. The same network can carry other vital services, such as IP CCTV, voice and RFID stock control, making the business case for fast payment systems even stronger.

Sales promotion: Dynamic marketing

With real time sales data flowing between stores and warehouses, you can create highly responsive sales promotions, like ‘One day only’ discounts and spot offers, to show up on display screens in relevant stores, giving same-day or even same-hour responses. Just a touch of the screen can bring your full range to customers, even in the smallest outlets.

To enable these high-definition video sales messages to reach in-store display screens, bandwidth and Class of Service (CoS) parameters can be managed with Ethernet Solutions or IPVPN linking all your stores nationally. Our LAN Solutions experts can design and install all required hardware for other instore applications, including IP CCTV, RFID networks and video displays.

Fraud detection: Protecting the bottom line

Naturally, you want to make your stock attractive and accessible to shoppers but how do you protect it against theft or fraud? We can link your stores seamlessly,  sharing stock and transaction information in real time.

Networked tills highlight suspicious shopper behaviour patterns, for example, when stolen stock is repeatedly returned on a genuine receipt across different stores. With Ethernet VPN or IPVPN linking all your stores nationally and with all your tills wired-in using our LAN Solutions offering, stores can share transaction data in real time. So, every refund can be tied to a specific, bar-coded receipt, making it instantly apparent when there’s an attempt to re-use a receipt to return stolen items. Just the ticket, as they say.