Partner Article

Gaining competitive edge in a globalised retail market

As the retail market grows, business is becoming globalised and organisations are increasingly tasked with engaging geographically distributed and mobile workforces. This involves operating with staff made up of employees who have an inherent understanding of technology and expect access to easy-to-use, consumerised services to complete everyday tasks.

Add to this the task of coordinating complex supply chains and connecting decision makers across multiple geographies and time zones and today’s retailers face significant challenges on a daily basis.

As a result, addressing the collaboration conundrum is essential. After all, completing daily tasks has never been more dependent on teamwork, with individuals working with an average of 10 colleagues at any one time and needing to remain connected irrespective of location and device preference.

The good news is, thanks to advances in cloud technology, meeting the communication needs of dispersed teams has never been more achievable. In fact, we’re already seeing vendors bringing interesting cloud offerings to the enterprise that are redefining things like team collaboration and document sharing, and we’ll start to see the rise of real-time communication applications too.

Even today, anyone with a smartphone can make a video call, so when employees walk through the doors of their office; they’re going to expect to communicate with their co-workers in the same way. Especially millennials, that understand and long for the increased levels of engagement that new communication tools provide.

For retail players large and small, this means trends towards consumerisation can’t be ignored. Organisations at the forefront of innovation and growth are already prioritising collaboration to drive competitive advantage - using video communication that consumers are experimenting with outside of the office, to promote productivity and satisfy new preferences.

Ultimately, whether its through improving supply chain management, fast-tracking the decision making process, or even supporting customer service - any retailer can benefit from a more connected workplace culture. Particularly using real-time collaboration tools to foster better working relationships, fuel cost savings and run dynamic and coordinated multi-market operations.

Various retailers have already demonstrated this, using video conferencing tools, for example, to reduce time to market for products, facilitate decision-making amongst management boards and enabling teams to discuss and roll out new plans, tactics and training initiatives,

In fact, MAF Hypermarkets Carrefour, the retail chain with over 110 stores in 17 countries is just one example of an established retailer that has adopted video tools to execute growth plans and compete in a global economy. Its goals were to reduce travel, increase productivity and promote efficiency – enabling senior executives to communicate irrespective of their varied locations.

Using video tools from Lifesize, it was able to remove the communication silos that were preventing the business delivering the connected experience and achieve its ambitious corporate targets, bridging the gap between stakeholders in the most efficient way possible. Senior staff can now conduct meetings, share reports and presentations remotely via video, which has dramatically reduced business travel costs. Most importantly, however, is that no matter where they are in the global business, executives can collaborate effectively with one another, with ease.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Andy Nolan .