Technology has been around for many decades, but when the pandemic hit, it revolutionized the business world, especially the retail sectors. With the rise in digitization comes the chance for customers to obtain any information they need in their pockets to make sensible purchase decisions. This created the need for brick and mortar stores to integrate technologies into their business strategy, which aided the transition from the legacy retail model to the tech-driven retail model.

Integration doesn't stop with introducing wireless networks and IoT devices to the network infrastructure. Rather, these networks need to be monitored constantly to ensure a smooth shopping experience for customers, since retail business still functions with the customer-first motive.

Network monitoring can tell you why a router went down or when you need to upgrade or purchase new storage systems. This level of proactive monitoring requires a network monitoring solution, not just to meet, but to exceed customer expectations as well as elevate internal operations and make the organization future-ready.

Role of network monitoring in retail

From ensuring data security to enhancing the customer shopping experience, retail sectors need network monitoring solutions to cope with changing customer expectations and sudden business trends. Though manual labor can still be done, a computing system like a network monitoring solution is what you need to stay on top of your network. Here are the prime factors that retailers should consider when evaluating a network monitoring tool.

 
Monitor data centers

Retail sectors are data-driven, and keeping such data accessible is business-crucial. Retail data centers hold data of product inventory, staff records, customer details, transaction details, etc., which needs constant monitoring to keep server health and performance in check.

 
Monitor critical files

In the retail sectors, where numerous people, including staff and network admins are accessing data on a daily basis, if any one of them moves or deletes a file or folder by chance, it will largely affect the end-user experience. This is why tracking critical files and folders is essential to prevent accidental data loss.

 
Monitor in-store Wi-Fi

Many retailers today offer free Wi-Fi to in-store customers, not only for the improved shopping experience, but also to gather data and create personalized marketing events. But this also poses risks of cyberattacks and malicious threats, which require network monitoring to keep such hazards away from your network.

 
Allow integrations

To instantly get notified of faults without switching between multiple tools, integration is the key. A network monitoring tool should be able to integrate with third-party tools to send alerts and initiate faster troubleshooting.

 
Gain in-depth visibility

As retail industries span across different regions, countries or continents, you need a network monitoring tool to gain complete visibility into the central data center and its corresponding networks. This helps to see the bigger picture of entire network architecture and foresee potential performance anomalies.

 
Monitor GPS and RFID sensors

Be it asset tracking, reducing wait time, enabling faster checkouts, preventing loss or theft, or tracking shipment and delivery status, Radio Frequency ID (RFID) tags and GPS are key for the retail industry. One bad shopping experience due to a faulty sensor could have a potential effect on customer retention, which makes RFID and GPS monitoring highly essential.

 
Monitor other IoT devices

Apart from IT components, retail sectors also started imposing IoT devices into their network infrastructure including cameras, scanners, people-counting sensors, point-of-sale (POS) equipment, Bluetooth beacons, digital signage, and more. Monitoring these IoT devices is important to provide personalized retail marketing and optimum store experience.

Primary objective of IT teams in monitoring a retail network

With retailers adopting brick-and-click models—buy-online-and-pickup-in-store (BOPIS), and e-commerce businesses adopting brick-and-mortar models—Amazon Go, helping them provide an uninterrupted omni-channel shopping experience network-wise must be the prime motive of network admins. Simply put, network admins should prioritize building a safer network that is agile, sustainable, and integral.

Integrating new technologies and implementing modern computing processes to be in line with business objectives and stay ahead of the competitors should be the next priority in building resilient networks.

Critical metrics retail IT teams must focus on

Retail network monitoring software - ManageEngine OpManager
  • Availability: The health of servers handling inventory and warehouse data is business-critical in the retail network. Knowing the availability status of critical servers and network devices in general helps you assure the smooth functioning of entire business operations.
  • Bandwidth: With retail businesses integrating BOPIS, free Wi-Fi for guests, and IoT devices into their network infrastructure, tracking bandwidth utilization and upgrading it as needed becomes essential to assure ideal network performance.
  • Throughput: Network throughput is the amount of data transmission that happens in a given period of time. This is important to consider since successful data packet transmission ensures exceptional network performance.
  • Latency: Delay in the data packet transfer is called latency. A lag in order placement or product loading due to network latency could harm business sales, so achieving a latency score of zero should be a priority for IT teams.
  • Storage: For retail businesses that store and access tons of data, monitoring storage systems for disk utilization and free space is vital to prevent storage issues.
  • Hardware health: Monitoring the hardware components of the network for their health and performance is essential to keep unforeseen performance outages at bay.
  • Speed Index: Since retail customers rely on the internet to make their purchase decisions, giving them a top-notch user experience across the website, applications, and other pages is crucial. This depends on how fast a page can populate its data, so tracking the speed index is required.

Challenges retail businesses face while monitoring their IT

 
Ensuring connectivity across retail headquarters, warehouses, and stores

With ever-increasing retail order volumes, ensuring continued network connectivity across headquarters, warehouses, and stores is challenging yet crucial for inventory management software (IMS) and warehouse management software (WMS) to perform at optimum level.

 
Updating universal change in retail product or category specifications

It's quite common in the retail sector to have both static and dynamic pricing models to keep up with the seasonal demands and consumer behavior trends. But every time the retailer changes the price of a product or category, the network admin needs to update it to the monitoring tool, which is quite labor-intensive.

 
Managing repetitive, mundane retail IT tasks

Effective network management demands certain repetitive actions like clearing logs, checking free disk space, etc., to prevent futile network downtime. In some cases where there is an outage, the on-field team rushes to the floor only to find that the fault could have been fixed remotely. In both cases, there are chances that the network admins could miss a critical task that causes prolonged network downtime and costs the business its reputation.

 
Establishing network security

In the retail industry, customer data is a monetary asset. Retailers should abide by PCI DSS compliance and other security policies to protect confidential customer data, such as personal information and payment information. If not, cyberattacks, data breaches, and non-compliant activities impose major threats to network security and customer data privacy. This further leads to brand distrust and customer churn.

 
Performing capacity planning

Network admins need to manually analyze historical data and understand the data growth trends to predict potential disk utilization, which is an arduous task. But this is essential to make judicial storage purchases and save on the IT budget.

OpManager: The best network monitoring tool for your every retail need!

To alleviate above mentioned challenges, you need a network monitoring solution that is feature-rich and future-ready. This is where ManageEngine OpManager comes in!

OpManager is a dynamic network monitoring tool that helps you gain optimum network performance with multi-level threshold monitoring, thereby advocating for a healthy end-user experience. The intuitive dashboards and ready-to-use templates help gain a view of the network health, even on the go. Since proactive monitoring promotes hassle-free business operations, OpManager is what you need.

Why should IT teams choose OpManager to monitor retail networks?

OpManager's comprehensive features make it stand out amongst other network monitoring solutions in the IT market. Some of them include:

  • Discovery profile: OpManager offers robust discovery options, with which you can manually discover devices with IP addresses, or you can automate the discovery process by configuring a schedule. This automation helps eliminate repetitive, manual pricing or product changes and updates.
  • Performance monitors: With over 200 performance metrics, OpManager monitors network devices such as routers, servers, firewalls, switches, storage devices, interfaces and more, of 10,000 device types from over 450 vendors for their health and performance. This aids the smooth functioning of the retail networks and also allows retailers to expand without a second thought.
  • Alerts and notifications OpManager's notification profiles send alerts on baseline breaches to concerned network admin via emails, Slack notifications, SMS messages, and webhooks. The color-coded web alarms help network admins prioritize critical tasks, reducing MTTR and preventing business losses. OpManager also offers third-party integrations with ServiceNow, ServiceDesk Plus, Rest APIs, etc. to enable prompt alerting.
  • Reports With over 100 built-in reports, OpManager provides a graphical representation of historical data to help network admins easily analyze data growth patterns and make informed decisions. You can also customize these reports as per retail needs.
  • Visualization With OpManager's network maps, you can visualize the bigger picture of network architecture and oversee the network performance at a glance. Network maps can be viewed in the form of Layer2 maps, business views, rack views, 3D views, and floor diagrams to help admins quickly locate faults in case of downtime.
  • Automations Leveraging AI- and ML-based automations, OpManager offers features like adaptive thresholds, root cause analysis, Workflows, etc. to initiate best fault management practices, and L1 and L2 troubleshooting. This helps network admins save their time and effort on monotonous, manual retail tasks.

Take control of your retail network with OpManager

With the emerging rise in IoT devices and omni-channel shopping experiences, retailers must invest in a comprehensive network monitoring solution such as ManageEngine OpManager. OpManager is a multi-functional, customizable, integrated, easy to use, and future-proof network monitoring solution that has got you covered for every retail hurdle that passed by, or that might arise.

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Customer reviews

OpManager

OpManager - 10 Steps Ahead Of The Competition, One Step Away From Being Unequalled.

- Network Services Manager, Government Organization

Review Role: Infrastructure and Operations Company Size: Gov't/PS/ED 5,000 - 50,000 Employees

"I have a long-standing relationship with ManageEngine. OpManager has always missed one or two features that would make it truly the best tool on the market, but over it is the most comprehensive and easy to use the product on the market."

OpManager

Easy Implementation, Excellent Support & Lower Cost Tool

- Team Lead, IT Service Industry

Review Role: Infrastructure and Operations Company Size: 500M - 1B USD

"We have been using OpManager since 2011 and our overall experience has been excellent. The tool plays a vital role in providing the value to our organisation and to the customers we are supporting. The support is excellent and staff takes full responsibilities in resolving the issues. Innovation is never stopping and clearly visible with newer versions"

OpManager

Easy Implementation With A Feature Rich Catalogue, Support Has Some Room For Improvement

- NOC Manager in IT Service Industry

Review Role: Program and Portfolio Management Company Size: 500M - 1B USD

"The vendor has been supporting during the implementation & POC phases providing trial licenses. Feature requests and feedback is usually acted upon swiftly. There was sufficient vendor support during the implementation phase. After deployment, the support is more than adequate, where the vendor could make some improvements."

OpManager

Great Monitoring Tool

- CIO in Finance Industry

Review Role: CIO Company Size: 1B - 3BUSD

"Manage Engine provides a suite of tools that have made improvements to the availability of our internal applications. From monitoring, management and alerting, we have been able to peak performance within our data center."

OpManager

Simple Implementation, Easy To Use. Very Intuitive.

- Principal Engineer in IT Services

Review Role: Enterprise Architecture and Technology Innovation Company Size: 250M - 500M USD

"Manage Engine support was helpful and responsive to all our queries"

 
 
 

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