With the pace of change speeding up, it can feel like retailers need to be everywhere and know everything about their business. The Aerohive SD-WAN solution can help you keep up with it all by providing a private business network that connects your branches together for easier access to your data, wherever you or your branches are.
If you’re running a retail business with multiple branches, you’ll be at the centre of a lot of information sharing.
Spreadsheets, inquiries about inventory, order forms, lists of promotions and customer details fly back and forth all day.
Chances are, you’re used to the mild inconvenience of trying to get and send information via emails, phone calls and file-sharing apps like Dropbox constantly. But as your business grows, the complexity and organisational burden is only going to increase. You’re going to want a greater volume of information, faster, and you’re going to need to juggle more ways to get it.
You need to link up your branches to simplify how information is shared within your business – a private network connection. Aerohive SD-WAN could be the solution. It provides reliable, secure and private access to digital resources that need to be shared between multiple stores.
“While Google Drive and Dropbox will allow users to share files via the cloud, with SD-WAN, your branches are connected within its own private network, giving you the ability to easily do things like connect all point of sale systems to your central customer database for managing loyalty programmes, and allow security cameras to record video from other stores to the head office,” says Sektor Sales Engineer Clint Harris.
Having your own private network that is accessible by different staff members introduces many efficiencies. For example, if you’re pushing out a nationwide marketing campaign, you know each manager or franchisee is getting the same price lists and marketing material such as advertising posters from a central hub.
Another example could be a voice-over- IP phone system, built over your private network. Staff could contact each other quickly by dialling an extension number at another branch, instead of having to remember multiple branch phone numbers.
A private network also helps you pinpoint products quickly and smoothly for customers. When a customer walks into your store looking for a specific product, you can check your database to immediately see if it’s in stock. If the answer is ‘no’, you can check inventory at other stores and send the customer to the closest, satisfying the shopper and keeping that sale.
“It just makes your day easier,” says Sachin Balu, Business Development Manager at Sektor. “Then you can use that extra time with customers.”
The Aerohive SD-WAN solution may be less of an investment than you think.
“An SD-WAN can sit across existing infrastructure to effectively ‘extend’ the head office network across the country, into all branches regardless of what internet provider they currently use or what data plan they are currently contracted on,” says Harris.
If a particular store needs to change its provider, or to make other network changes, the Aerohive SD-WAN solution will move with you without worry. It can even provide “anywhere” remote connectivity to travelling staff or those working from home, and the software- driven solution can be configured to block unproductive internet traffic like irrelevant websites and Facebook video.
The result is a comprehensive private network solution that will help you and your team easily share the information you need, when and where you need it. And then you can get on with running your business.
For more information, please contact
Sachin Balu sachinb@sektor.co.nz
+64 21 805 073
As published in issue 763 August-September 2019 of NZ Retail Magazine. Visit THEREGISTER.CO.NZ or click here to purchase or subscribe.
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