| Business continuity will ‘combat promiscuous retail customers’
According to SunGard, the retail industry has never been so dependent on IT and industry figures show that the retail catalogue industry alone can lose more than £72,000 per hour of system downtime. Competition between retailers is fierce and increased choice has resulted in reduced customer loyalty. The advent of the promiscuous customer means that if one store doesn't have the goods they need they can easily defect to the competition. As retailers increasingly operate a 'just-in-time' ordering and stocking system it's imperative that their supply chain has the right business continuity provision in place. At the conference, Richard Jones, managing consultant at SunGard Availability Services, will discuss how retailers can use business continuity planning to combat the customer-promiscuous environment in which they now operate. He will also warn firms against neglecting to consider the plans of their suppliers as, if their systems go down, the negative impact on the retailer's business could be catastrophic. In a just-in-time environment, retailers should check that their critical suppliers have a business continuity plan in place and agree stringent service level agreements to be assured of an 'always on' service. Jones says: "The retail industry has to rely on dozens of different IT systems to remain one step ahead of the competition. The systems they started to investigate in the 80s, such as EPOS, JIT and armchair shopping, are now a reality. As they rely heavily on technology to do business, if anything goes wrong it happens fast and has an almost immediate impact on their ability to do business. Effective business continuity planning is the answer and once they have covered these critical systems they can refocus their efforts on other core retail functions."
•Date:
13th November 2003 •Region: UK •Type:
Article •Topic:
BC general |
