In today's fluctuating economy, the ability of retailers to adapt to changing business conditions requires a service oriented infrastructure. To be service oriented means to be continually focused on the business and improving service while improving infrastructure efficiency and reducing costs, and effectively managing risk to ensure security, scalability and availability.When IT infrastructure is designed to be service-oriented, it focuses on supporting and enabling employees, partners, and customers in a highly responsive way. Extending your business to an increasingly connected and collaborative world requires the confidence and trust that your infrastructure is secure and resilient. This presentation focuses on how IBM’s endpoint management solution can bring efficiency and cost reduction to a retailer’s dynamic infrastructure capabilities. The solution delivers value to retail by reducing the cost of operations, improving the control of endpoints and helping retailers manage processes more efficiently.
Every retailer faces a unique business situation and brings a unique set of resources and assets, strengths, and advantages to the marketplace. But what are the universal ‘imperatives’ that retailers have to get right in order to play a winning game?At IBM, we’ve organized our thinking around three such imperatives—what we call the ‘Smarter Retail imperatives.’DELIVER A SMARTER SHOPPING EXPERIENCE: Retailers who deliver a Smarter Shopping Experience are able to interact with their customers in ways that provide each of them with a timely, relevant and personalized experience.360º View of CustomerConnected MarketingOmni-Channel MarketingBUILD SMARTER MERCHANDISING AND SUPPLY NETWORKS: The retailer’s role as ‘matchmaker’ between customers and offerings remains the essential, indispensable art and science at the heart of the business. Our vision for Smarter Merchandising and Supply Networks is aimed at helping you satisfy the challenge of rising consumer expectations here.Omni-Channel MerchandisingOmni-Channel Supply NetworksDRIVE SMARTER OPERATIONS: Smarter Operations encompasses a range of improvements that are designed to streamline back-office processes, take advantage of reduced-cost delivery models, and establish much better visibility into organizational performance.Back-Office TransformationRetail Infrastructure OptimizationPerformance Insights and ManagementFor more information, see www-935.ibm.com/industries/retail/
Retail Enterprise mobility challengesHeterogeneous infrastructures and a wide variety of devices. Retail endpoints often include servers and desktops as well as POS terminals, embedded PCs in cash registers, kiosks, and wireless/mobile inventory tracking devices. They often run a variety of operating systems, including Microsoft®, Windows, Linux®, Unix® and Mac. Requirements for “always up” availability. Store-based devices operate as front-end data collection nodes that feed information back to headquarters, distribution centers and suppliers. These are mission-critical devices—in many cases, business cannot be transacted without them. High availability for the supply-chain infrastructure is essential, so operations tasks need to be completed and validated quickly and transparently.Ever-increasing compliance requirements. While PCIDSS is the most common retail compliance standard, retailers must increasingly contend with Sarbanes-Oxley, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and other requirements. Typical compliance activities often are reactive—triggered by an upcoming audit rather than conducted continuously, forcing organizations to get systems into compliance within difficult time frames.Cost and efficiency pressures. Retail competitiveness often revolves around being the low-cost supplier of a good or service. Spending on IT is often a low priority for management, who feel pressurized to deliver cost savings. Yet manual, labor-intensive IT processes both increase the cost and decrease the efficiency of endpoint management.Poor visibility into systems. In a distributed environment, it’s hard to know what is installed on each endpoint, whether new software has been delivered and installed correctly, and which endpoints need which patches. Poor visibility makes it difficult to manage compliance. It exposes the organization to technology and business risks including spending on software that may be unauthorized or unnecessary.Slow implementation and response times When retail networks stretch across a region, a country or the globe, infrastructures can struggle to keep up. Many run over low-bandwidth, high-latency networks. As a result, system and security management tasks such as software distribution can take up a high percentage of available bandwidth, slowing network performance, end-user productivity and the ability to transact business.Endpoint Management supports the following features :BigFix technology in the software helps in supporting the sudden virus and malware attacks by identifying the exact patches to the correct endpoints across the network within the oilfields . The control is provided by a single management console .This approach provides effective decision making to the endpoints.Manages configurations for connection and content delivery functions such as email, VPNs and wireless networks making the platforms secure and maintaining privacyProvides Precise and up-to-the minute visibility into and continuous implementation of security configurations and patches. The intelligent agent built into the IBM solution autonomously initiates update and configuration actions to keep the endpoint current and compliant with organizational policies .
With convergence of technologies, rapid innovations and the rising complexity of devices, the retail industry needs a high level of patch and endpoint compliance without impacting the end user without major infrastructure investment - Advance Threat ProtectionBig data, cloud and mobile device are pressurizing the network but consumer satisfaction demands 24x7 network availability and good performance - Manage Endpoint in Dynamic NetworkIn case of security outage confidential data needs to be protected at all the endpoints quickly, ensuring security compliance of Mobiles and BYOD is very essential as they access sensitive customer data as well as supply chain elements - Mobile Enterprise and SecurityIBM endpoint solution is a one stop solution that not only shows ROI within days of implementation but also ensures regulatory compliance that can be reported and showcased in audits. - Compliance and Cost
IBM has helped retailers like Coop Estense and A Large European Discount Retailer to bring in efficiency and cost reduction by managing all their endpoints on a single integrated platform. Coop EstenseBusiness challenge: To comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), Coop Estense had to manually deploy a patch on its firewall. Managing this solution long-term proved to be extremely complex. Therefore, the company needed to implement a solution that would automate compliance of all the endpoints without increasing the workload of its IT personnel. Specifically, Coop Estense required that the solution enable it to effectively manage patches and network access.Solution: Coop Estense implemented IBM Tivoli Endpoint Manager software, which is built on BigFix technology. The Tivoli software provides the client with accurate, precise and near-real-time visibility into and continual enforcement of security configurations and patches. The software also automatically manages patches for the operating systems and applications across the client’s 2,500 endpoints regardless of location, connection type or status and remediates problems related to applied patches.Benefits: Coop Estense unifies products to achieve 360-degree infrastructure visibility to improve ROI and overall endpoint management, lower maintenance costs and reduce problem-resolution times, and comply with a payment card industry standard when it implements IBM Tivoli Endpoint Manager softwareFor more information on the Coop Estense success story, refer to: http://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?subtype=SP&infotype=PM&appname=SWGE_TI_EA_USEN&htmlfid=TIC14209USEN&attachment=TIC14209USEN.PDF A Large European Discount RetailerBusiness challenge: As the number of endpoint devices at this large European discount retailer increased, more servers were needed to run the company’s legacy endpoint management system, and more technicians were needed to manage these servers. Additionally, the solution could not quickly provide IT staff with insight into patch compliance and software licensing across its operations.Solution: Working with CONSALIT, the company replaced five disparate products for security and compliance management, patch management, and lifecycle management with IBM® Endpoint Manager software. By doing so, it was able to reduce the number of management servers in use from 70 to 1, while increasing the number of endpoints under management from 100,000 to 225,000 worldwide. The number of IT administrators required to manage the company’s endpoints also decreased from about 140 people to 35.Benefits: Saved EUR3.2 million (including labor, software licensing and hardware savings) and realized a six-month return on investment● Reduced time to deploy new patches and software upgrades by more than 90 percent● Decreased number of staff needed to support endpoint management by 75 percent (from 140 to 35 people)For more information on A Large European Discount Retailer’s success story, refer to: http://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?subtype=SP&infotype=PM&appname=SWGE_TI_EA_USEN&htmlfid=TIC14248USEN&attachment=TIC14248USEN.PDF
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