Consumers are becoming more and more accustomed to: shopping anytime, anywhere, and with any end device – i.e. 24/7. Retailers therefore need to offer their goods on all channels using a digitally supported omnichannel approach: stationary, in the online shop, via mobile apps or social media channels. This enables them to create a seamless shopping experience for their customers. On the way to becoming an end-to-end digital commerce retailer, T-Systems advises, develops, and implements the appropriate digital technologies, integrates them with existing PIM, ERP, or CRM systems, and redesigns existing portals and web shops.
The EHI study "IT-Trends im Handel 2019" (IT Trends in Retail 2019) shows: cloud services are also an increasingly important part of IT infrastructure and digitalization in the retail sector. Only one in five retailers still believes that the importance of the cloud will remain insignificant. T-Systems offers retailers the entire range of public, private, and hybrid cloud solutions as end-to-end services. In addition to Telekom's own Open Telekom Cloud, these also include managed cloud services for the hyperscalers AWS, Google Cloud Platform, or Azure. This also includes the migration of existing IT systems such as SAP to the cloud.
POS systems, refrigeration and air-conditioning systems, access control, merchandise listing and hygiene regulations. Plus returns of webshop purchases in the branch and conventional business processes: retailers have to deal with all these processes quickly across multiple departments and locations. Paper, phone calls, and emails take time, are error-prone and have had their day in the digital world.
Sooner or later hackers will penetrate IT systems, take web shops offline or try to blackmail their victims with ransomware attacks. As cyberattacks become more and more professional, they can no longer be warded off using conventional tools. T-Systems has Cyber Defense Centers, so-called SOCs, which monitor company networks and IT systems around the clock and ward off attempted attacks. If necessary, the security experts check the IT systems in advance for vulnerabilities, for example with the aid of specific penetration tests. This allows any identified vulnerabilities to be remedied before hackers strike.
Develop customized shopping experiences, targeted promotions and pricing strategies, efficiently procure goods, and digitalize the supply chain: with SAP S/4 HANA, you can transform your business processes – including through artificial intelligence – from the cloud or on-premise. Design your own intelligent company with SAP for Retail. The SAP Customer Activity Repository (CAR), for example, improves demand forecasting and maximizes the impact of promotions. Take advantage of preconfigured business solutions and know-how from thousands of successfully implemented SAP implementation projects with SAP Best Practices.
Keeping your employees properly informed and enabling location-independent collaboration, allows you to bind your employees together into real teams. This is not so easy for retailers with many branches in different regions. Collaboration solutions such as employee apps with chat functions or push notifications, digital workshops or video streaming help to reach everyone and improve internal communication. T-Systems offers GDPR-compliant collaboration solutions from the cloud and integrates them into existing systems. The result: authentic communication and more productive teams.
Application scenarios such as AR and VR, seamless shopping, self-checkout or high-resolution multimedia streaming services for digital signage have high bandwidth, signal runtime, and network availability requirements. And robots in warehouses, automated guided vehicles (AGVs) in production or intralogistics, IoT solutions such as condition monitoring, track and trace, digital price tags, or in-store analytics require real-time communication. Often, however, the necessary high-quality mobile networking is missing. The solution: a 5G campus network that connects public and private mobile networks as well as Wi-Fi and enables real-time data exchange.
