Retail and store networks: keep your teams free to sell.
A shop cannot plan its day around an IT incident. Welcoming customers, taking payments, managing stock and communicating with head office all need an environment that is properly looked after. Skill Group helps you coordinate the equipment, connectivity and contacts for your stores.
Start from the sales journey.
Finding a product, checking its availability, processing an order or calling another store: these tasks show what depends on the network and the applications. We distinguish between point-of-sale equipment, head office services and the solutions managed by your software vendors.
This work is useful when opening a store, but also when recurring incidents take up store managers' time.
Plan your connection and outage scenarios.
Business internet must be assessed at the store's address, with its actual lead times and specifications. The need for a backup depends on what the connection is used for and how those uses work.
Do not assume that a backup connection automatically means every payment can still go through: terminals, till applications and payment providers have their own conditions. Scenarios are checked with the people responsible for them.
Organise the store's networks and equipment.
Workstations, mobile devices, specialist equipment and any visitor access do not meet the same needs. We review connections, authorised access and the constraints of the premises. A stockroom or a customer pick-up area may be used differently from the sales floor.
Professional Wi-Fi is validated along the routes actually used, with the devices concerned.
Give your store network a common framework.
With several stores, you need to know which choices are shared and which remain local. Equipment standards, contacts, support procedures and documentation can be organised together. The responsibilities of head office, any franchisees and suppliers are clearly set out.
Multi-site interconnection is designed around the data flows required; it must not give indiscriminate access to every environment.
Support your teams without turning sales staff into IT support.
Everyone should know where to report incidents and requests. A workstation to set up, a user who needs access rights or a software problem does not always follow the same route. A user support scope defines the information to pass on and who to hand it to.
Prepare a concrete project.
Describe the number of stores, how they are organised, the software involved and the most frequent problems. For an opening, give the planned dates and any building work constraints. We can then identify the dependencies to coordinate before choosing solutions.
Your questions
Do you work on tills and payments?
The scope must be defined with software vendors, maintenance providers and payment providers. Responsibility for the network does not mean responsibility for the whole chain.
Can stores be brought into line gradually?
Yes, a schedule can take account of contracts, existing equipment and openings. The stages are defined with head office.
Do all the stores need to be connected to each other?
Only if the way you work requires it. The architecture depends in particular on where the applications are located and which exchanges are authorised.
Got a digital issue? You don’t have to work out who should handle it.
Describe your situation in your own words. The Skill Group team will get back to you to talk it through.