Retail: from peaks to profits

Alex Beynon at Dynatrace describes how proactive retailers deliver during Black Friday and beyond

 

Black Friday and Cyber Monday remain two of the most important dates of the year for retailers. Some may spend the whole year planning their Black Friday sales, using the day as an opportunity to clear their overstock inventory and offer discounts on seasonal and trending items.

 

Driving sales is top of the agenda for retailers during the Black Friday period, so it’s important that they plan ahead to ensure the weekend runs to plan. In 2022, online shopping accounted for over half (£4.81 billion) of the money spent by UK consumers on Black Friday.

 

Retailers must therefore ensure that the software and digital infrastructure supporting their online and in-store shopping experiences are performing no matter what.

 

Navigating the hurdles during the shopping frenzy

As consumers shop for their favourite items, they expect a smooth and seamless experience. If something goes wrong, there is a high chance customers will not complete purchases out of frustration.

 

For example, if their basket was taking too long to proceed to checkout, or if items said to be in stock aren’t when they go to pay. Retailers must eliminate this sort of consumer frustration, or risk losing out during the Black Friday season.

 

When issues arise in customer’s online and in-store shopping journeys and the cloud technology stacks that support them, the actual process of identifying the issue, pinpointing the root cause, and finding a resolution can take days.

 

This is especially the case when IT infrastructure is spread across front-end and back-end systems, and across third parties such as cloud platforms and global systems integrators. A single retail application transaction touches 33 different technologies from beginning to end and so a single disturbance with just one of these can cause major disruption across IT and harm the entire business.

 

This complex web of technologies is caused by the drive for retailers to digitise as they compete with rival brands and try to keep up with ever changing customer expectations.

 

However, IT operations teams often lack the tools or skills to gain the necessary visibility into these new technologies, leaving them behind in critical events like Black Friday. If this occurs, retailers are at risk of applications crashing when issues arise – driving customers away from their checkouts, and towards their competitors’.

 

Exacerbating this issue even further, the fast pace of digital transformation in the retail sector is also creating more opportunities for problems to arise. Findings show that 52% of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) admitted to making trade-offs between speed, security, quality, and user experience as they rush to digitally transform.

 

Retailers can’t afford to make these trade-offs. They need to identify and resolve problems that arise proactively before customer experience is affected.  

 

Resolving issues with speed

To achieve this, retailers need to be alert to any degradation in their customer experience and have access to the insights needed to resolve the underlying problems quickly and efficiently.

 

This can best be achieved with a modern observability platform that automatically identifies problems and uncovers the root cause in real time. In this way, retailers’ IT operations teams can resolve issues before they have any adverse impact on the consumer or business during peak seasons.

 

Photobox, a leading provider of personalised photo products achieved positive results from adopting this approach. Given the nature of Photobox’s business, customers’ shopping journeys take place over extended periods of time – as they upload their photographs, customise the layout of their photobook or personalised gift items, then proceed to checkout. It’s vital that Photobox’s tech stack can handle the increased load and pressure of Black Friday to enable customers to design their items seamlessly.

 

By embracing a modern observability strategy, Photobox’s teams have resolved issues up to 80% faster when they occur, helping to deliver seamless customer experience during busy shopping periods. A modern observability platform also allowed Photobox to receive real-time, actionable data on how customers interact with the company’s digital services, and how its application performance affects its sales.

 

A robust security strategy

In addition to ensuring their applications can support increased traffic, retailers must establish security at every touchpoint in their tech stack. The rise of modern cloud environments has made it more difficult for retailers to secure the applications that power their omnichannel experiences and supply chain operations.

 

To tackle these issues, 71% of retailers have a complex cyber-security strategy that is supported by a myriad of point tools and solutions. But 80% of retail Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) say there are still gaps that allow vulnerabilities to slip through the net and reach live applications in production.

 

To minimise their risk, retailers must embrace a more effective approach to vulnerability management. The first step is to empower teams with solutions that enable them to detect run-time vulnerabilities and attacks by providing a single source of truth in real time.

 

Retailers can then resolve security breaches during peak shopping periods with speed, minimise the risk of application downtime, and ensure customers can browse seamlessly across their platforms.

 

Preparing for the expected and unexpected

In today’s retail landscape, it is imperative to turn website visitors into loyal customers. Retailers must ensure they have the appropriate IT infrastructure in place to handle peak shopping periods, not only during high sale seasons, but all year round.

 

The convergence of modern observability and application security can help retailers to bolster peak season performance. This can ultimately prepare them for both expected and unexpected demand, helping to solidify loyalty with existing customers, and encourage new customers into their checkouts.

 

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Alex Beynon is Regional Retail Director UKI at Dynatrace

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com