From the perspective of a customer, a successful retailer is a simple proposition. They enter a store, they pick up the items they want, and they pay for them. Of course, as you know only too well, supporting this simple transaction is a dense and complex web of interconnected elements. It’s impossible to shop if there’s no stock. There’s no stock if there’s no warehouse holding the stock. There’s no warehouse without shipping, manufacturing, refrigeration, shelving; the list goes on and on. However, in the modern age of retailing, one element underpins nearly everything that holds a retailer together. Their network connects all their digital devices and enables the applications and processes needed to operate the business. Instability, when there is a problem with the network, often leads directly to revenue loss and poor customer experience, which in turn affects profitability.

It’s a vital point, yet one that many businesses today seem to miss. In its Future of Customer Experience report, PwC found that one in three consumers say they will walk away from a brand they love after just one bad experience. However, these issues persist, and on a large scale. A survey of 504 UK-based business leaders recently found that businesses lost over 50 million hours and £3.7 billion due to internet failures in 2023. Cumulatively, the survey estimates that UK businesses experienced 8.8 million “internet failures” and 50.5 million hours of disruptive downtime in 2023. In the last five years, the cost of missed sales, lost productivity and other disruptions due to downtime has risen by 400%. These are devastating losses, in a time where many retail margins are razor thin.

Yet despite these worrying numbers, it seems that many retailers simply don’t feel that their solutions providers are holding up their end of the bargain. Recent research revealed the most common support pain points for retailers. The top three are network speed and reliability (57%), innovation / development (55%) and IT staffing (53%). So, is this simply the standard that retailers can expect from their solutions providers for the foreseeable future? Is it a like-it-or-lump-it situation? In short, no. Some providers aren’t just building stable networks and ensuring they work seamlessly, but actively going above and beyond to offer services that many retailers simply don’t know are available.

More reliability, less degradation

Enter Juniper Networks. For nearly thirty years, the company has been providing high-performance networking solutions and services. In a recent conversation with Grocery Gazette, Keith Cahoon, Retail Specialist at Juniper Networks, explained some of the fundamental flaws that his customers were experiencing with their prior network solutions. “One of our grocery retailers coined a phrase: service degradation is the silent problem in retail,” he says.

“Think about complex IT systems. If something really breaks then IT teams are quite good at realising that. Everybody’s screaming, someone’s pressed a big red panic button by calling the Service Desk, everyone’s alerted that these stores can’t do business anymore. The bigger issue is when service is degraded for an associate or colleague on a shop floor or in a warehouse. If someone’s trying to scan a piece of stock or print a discount label or any one of 101 other tasks, and it takes them a minute to do it as opposed to a second, that’s a minute of productivity loss. And if you’re a retailer with 10,000 employees and this happens 10 times a day, that’s a productivity loss of 1,667 hours or 208 full colleague shifts wasted. That’s the real problem in a retail environment. The retail organisation won’t even know 90% of those problems.”

Cahoon says that it’s these types of issues that Juniper Networks is focused on using Artificial Intelligence to identify and pre-emptively prevent from happening in the first place. Many retailers, he says, simply don’t know these problems exist within their network, or know, and have no idea what to do about it. “If people aren’t reporting these issues, if it’s become the norm, then you can be sure that the c-suite isn’t hearing about it. So, it’s about visibility, the awareness, the understanding and impact of service degradation as well as service outages. That’s where Juniper can help them understand and resolve their network issues.” Retail customers such as Halfords have reported 100% reduction in network reported issues from its stores.

A faster, lower cost and lower risk, refresh cycle

A paradigm shift from network management to assuring user experience forms one of three key pillars in the company’s strategy. The second pillar in this strategy is helping retailers reduce the cost of running and replacing their network – which Cahoon says is inevitable every five to ten years. “One of the main capital costs of a network is actually the replacement of it,” he notes. “Every five to ten years retailers will have to replace it to keep ahead of device and technology innovations. But the cost of doing that if you’ve got 1000 retail stores is a lot, because you’re having to pre-stage, install, deploy, test and validate across all these different stores.” Historically, much of this has been very manual, repetitive and prone to error.

This is another area where Juniper Networks differentiates itself.

One transformation example is Juniper’s customer, Musgrave, Ireland’s leading food retail, wholesale, and food service company. Historically, Musgrave would have up to four engineers involved in a store refresh and who would be engaged up to four separate times per store. Twice to plan and pre-stage and twice on site, with at least one of these visits needing to be out of hours (and all of the associated extra costs and disruption of out-of-hours security staff to accompany the visit).

“Because our AI-Native Networking Platform is a modern cloud-based application, everything can be pre-configured and automated in advance of ever going to a store or getting any equipment out of any boxes,” says Cahoon. “They don’t have to pre-stage any of that. Musgrave now has a single engineer who visits each store, physically installs all the equipment, connects to the Juniper cloud via 4G, the network configures itself and, when complete, the engineer flips the main connection over to the new Juniper network with only a single minute of downtime. Musgrave has automated this process now to a point where it completes during the trading day, avoiding unnecessary out-of-hours costs.

Better understanding of customer habits and needs

The third pillar in Juniper Networks’ strategy for vastly improved customer networks is retail analytics and customer digital engagement. “Our platform actually helps retailers better understand what their customers are doing in a retail store. Imagine web analytics for your physical stores. We’re helping you to learn who your customers are, when they’re coming to store, how long they’re spending in store, and in which areas of the stores they’re spending more time than others. And then, we’re giving you the ability to engage with those customers digitally, using all this knowledge,” Cahoon says.

Via Juniper’s platform, retailers can monitor customer journeys and convert this information into being able to find items, automate click-and-collect or even request assistance from an associate. Retailers can also present offers direct to customers in store, linking real time identity and location and historical purchases and preferences.

Cahoon says “there is a tacit value exchange between a retailer and customer each time information is shared such as a loyalty card, customer Wi-Fi or using a retailer’s mobile app. We offer the ability to tie all of these components together and offer highly personalised offers based on the individual, at exactly the right time in the buying journey. This helps increase customer loyalty and lays the foundations for increased basket size and customer satisfaction.

Research by Amazon Payment Services (previously Payfort) suggests engaged customers buy 90% more often and spend 60% more per transaction online. Adapting this engagement strategy to offline sales could therefore pay dividends for retailers.

Among the retailers that have deployed Juniper’s solutions, the results have been overwhelmingly positive. Halfords, for instance, noted a 35% increase in network uptime. They achieved a 100% reduction in network associated problems and tickets logged with their helpdesk. In fact, the network was described as ‘game changing’ for their operations during an interview.

‘Let us prove it’

Ultimately, it’s clear that the standards for network stability and reliability within the retail industry simply don’t meet the needs of modern brands. And, whilst the majority of retailers struggle, the dependence on a reliable network is only growing. Research has shown that this heightened dependence means 15% of UK businesses, some 850,000 nationwide, would now start losing money the moment their connectivity fails. This is 81,000 more firms than five years ago.

What Juniper Networks is offering goes above and beyond simply maintaining a reliable and stable network. With the three pillars of the company’s offering combined, retailers can future-proof their operations, remove many of the classic pain points in their network, pre-emptively avoid problems and utilise the network’s efficiencies to the fullest, by tailoring the customer experience to its maximum potential. “Just give it a try,” says Cahoon. “You’ll see the difference, we are confident.”

Interested in hearing more about the power of a secure network? Sign up to Grocery Gazette and, NTT & Juniper’s webinar on this subject here: Why a next-level network can transform your productivity & revenue

Subscribe to Grocery Gazette for free

Sign up here to get the latest grocery and food news each morning