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42 percent employ data analytics to make smarter buying
decisions. A quarter more plan to add it by the end of 2016.
Keep in mind, the majority of the retailers surveyed by
Lightspeed bring in a $1 million or less in revenue per year,
and 95 percent take in $5 million or less. Seven out of 10
respondents represent one-store operations.
In order to maintain and achieve these technological
goals, and keep pace with much larger contestants, most
independent and specialty retailers will need an upgrade
to their IT infrastructures. This is precisely where hosted
and managed virtual servers come into play. Whereas
large and more sophisticated retail organizations typically
operate their own data centers, develop their own applica-
tions and employ internal IT personnel, organizations that
choose the hosted/managed route immediately gain access
to the computing power to run advanced, data-crunching
applications without the upfront capital expenditure and
internal expertise typically associated with hardware and
software facilities. In the hosted model, third-party pro-
viders not only maintain both the physical location of the
virtualized servers but also manage, upkeep and protect the
specific applications that are running on that customer’s IT
resources. And more and more, hosted providers also can
bundle in several retail solutions and applications, such as
CRM, employee resource management, channel integration,
unified communications, mobile POS and marketing, and
data storage and analytics. IT resources
are purchased as-needed on a monthly
recurring basis. At the same timw, any
software upgrades or hardware mainte-
nance, as well as security, typically are
included, and services are often offered
on-demand, allowing retailers to rap-
idly scale capabilities up and down for
peak selling seasons or around a par-
ticular campaign, only paying for what
is used. In many ways, it’s a realization
of the “retail-as-a-service” model prom-
ised years ago.
Planned In-store Tech Budget among
Small, Independent Retailers
Plan to invest in data-supported marketing
by end of 2016
35%
Some likelihood to introduce in-store
beacons at some point
34%
Will invest in a mobile POS for faster
inventory look-up on the store floor
27%
Plan to implement a mobile POS for on-the-
floor customer checkout in next 18 months
25%
Want to introduce a branded mobile app by
the end of 2016
19%
Source: Lightspeed
Of course, putting something even
remotely close to “mission critical”
into the hands of a third-party can be
disconcerting, and the two biggest con-
cerns among tech adopters is security
(i.e. customer payment information)
and accessibility (need to access my
stuff). In actuality, however, resources
tend to be safer under the watchful eye
of expert providers than they are on-
premises, security studies have shown.
Back-up and disaster recovery also tend
to get a boost. Provider-owned and
leased data centers tend to offer built-in
redundancy and disaster-proof building
specs, while “snapshots” of a virtual
server can be taken throughout the
day, ensuring more up-to-date data in
the event a back-up is needed. Because
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