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White Paper

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Transforming Retail Business using Cisco Unified
Wireless Network Mobility Services

This whitepaper describes how Retail Businesses can employ mobility services to

improve business efficiency, boost profitability, and increase Customer satisfaction.

Summary

Initially adopted as a method of increasing productivity in warehouse and storage areas, wireless

networking is emerging as a critical component in the retail business. Having been one of the

earliest adopters of the technology, retail enterprises have gained tremendous understanding

of wireless networking and are now using it to transform how they buy and sell products,

service customers, and conduct their day to day business.

Aberdeen’s 2004 research revealed that just as the foundation of a house is intrinsic to its value,

real-time networking (wired and wireless), as the foundation of real-time communication, is intrinsic

to the value of the retail enterprise.

In today’s world, when the in-store experience is critical to

capturing the hearts and minds of consumers, mobility services built upon a pervasive, reliable

wireless network have become the underpinning of most customer-facing initiatives to drive

incremental sales and revenue growth results, and are the foundation of programs to reduce

costs and increase profits. Cisco

Wireless LAN Mobility Services allow retail enterprises to gain

business benefits from more informed customer-employee interactions, up-to-date inventory and

sales information, and the ability to analyze store and employee performance more rapidly, all

while ensuring intellectual property and proprietary information is protected.

Trends Driving Retail Enterprise IT Departments

Retail is a behemoth among industry sectors. Across all major world economies, its size as a

percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) ranges from 20 to 33 percent. Despite its size,

the retail industry’s net margin of approximately 3 percent

is among the lowest of any sector.

Consequently, improvements and efficiencies are paramount and can mean billions of dollars in

savings, avoided costs, or both. Until recently, a solid return on investment (ROI) case for data

connections between stores and corporate offices was difficult to make in retail chains, especially

in those with a store footprint of less than 10,000 square feet. The monthly cost for T1 or Frame

Relay lines to individual stores was disproportionately high and was exacerbated by the

requirement for up-front capital for hardware investments.

Today, however, connections to even the smallest offices or outlets cost a fraction of what leased

lines cost. These cost reductions have enabled retail stores and outlets to become integrated into

the overall IT infrastructure, allowing retailers to take advantage of IT systems to become much

more customer-centric by gaining near real-time information from stores, employees, supply

chains, and customers. A pervasive, secure wireless network frees this information from the

confines of desktop computers and allows it to be used anywhere, anytime to improve the

“Real-time Networks: The Foundation of the Empowered Store,” Aberdeen Group, December 2004

2002 U.S. Economic Census: Advanced Comparative Statistics for U.S. based on 1997 NAICs