Challenges

Typical Challenges in the Retail Industry

Higher demands for connectivity

Universal connectivity becomes imperative when retailers keep track of products and inventory in multiple store locations nationwide or worldwide.

Retailers try to keep their inventory levels low and inventory turnover rate time short because that directly affects profitability. Close contact with innovative suppliers helps to rapidly roll out new products and to be responsive to customer demands.

Retailers collect more and more information about customers and feed it to processing in a central facility. RFID adoption, wireless networking and Internet access demand connectivity that is highly available, reliable and secure.

Increased security risks

Store clerks with wireless point of sale (POS) devices can offer more information about products and their availability to customers, but wireless connectivity is also a security concern.

There have been incidents where criminals were able to break into the retailers´ networks using wireless connections and steal credit card numbers and customer information. The criminals did not have to enter the store; they were able do it from a car that was parked nearby.

Payment Card Security (PCI)

Payment security at e-commerce sites is still holding back customers from using online stores. Credit card information security has been reported on tabloids several times during last year. That has prompted Visa and Master Card to act and create a Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard.

This standard applies to all payment channels, including retail (brick-and-mortar), mail/ telephone order and e-commerce.

The standard tells merchants how to keep sensitive cardholder data safe from hackers and fraudsters. The problem is to implement security measures cost-effectively in a highly-distributed environment.