The retail sector was already undergoing the fastest pace of change in its history before the COVID-19 pandemic emerged.
The pandemic and its after-effects will only accelerate this further and change the face of retail forever. Retail CIOs are investing heavily in digital transformation, driven by the core requirements to move closer to the consumer, increase brand loyalty, understand buying behaviours and capture greater wallet spend.
What our customers say
NATHAN BISHOP
Group IT Services Director
Grafton Group
MIKE CLIFFORD
Infrastructure and Service Delivery Director
The Co-Operative Group
Your challenges
Maximise revenues, customer experience and loyalty by developing customer insight
Increase agility and flexibility to react to changes in client demand, fiscal pressures and legislation
Increasing pressure to reduce costs across supply chain, drive efficiency and maximise margins
Improve efficiency by transforming retail workers into knowledge workers
How to take advantage of process automation in the supply chain
Mitigating the risk of cyber-attacks to secure customer data and protect against reputational damage
Our key Retail solutions
As a major holder of sensitive customer information and their purchasing habits, retail organisations have to maintain the security of the data they hold about their customers, in whatever format it is stored. Our range of Document Services equip organisations with innovative digital document management solutions that support more integrated, agile ways of working:
Managed Print Rooms
These specialist resources and operatives help organisations move away from paper-based processes and workflows, towards digital transformation strategies that help messages be conveyed more effectively.
Managed Post Room
Our digital post rooms and processes minimise the processing time of inbound and outbound mail, while improving its quality at the same time. These managed services help support the adopting of quicker, more agile and more efficient working practices organisation-wide.
Secure Scanning Services
Secure record scanning services, smart digital working methods and highly skilled resources can be deployed to reduce overall print volumes and improve accessibility to important data.
The benefits
- Streamline workflows and processes
- Create a single, integrated view of data
- Rationalise property assets
- Support sustainability agendas
- Increase information accessibility, including historic documentation
- Enhance protection and security of sensitive data
An omni-channel approach to retail demands working practices and the supporting infrastructure to be modernised, so that they can remain flexible and agile to the changing expectations of retail customers who are increasingly shopping online. More digital retail means more customer data, including personal and payment information but also increasingly their behavioural and shopping habits.
SCC provides two key services to support the transformation of organisations across the sector. The first is Oworx, a subsidiary business to SCC that provides a complete suite of cloud enablement services. The second key service is Managed Colocation, a secure and flexible arrangement where organisations can host their own infrastructure and hardware in SCC’s accredited data centres.
In addition to these, we also provide a wider range of technical services and facilities to ensure organisations get a hybrid cloud solution perfectly suited to their needs. These include:
Data centres
We operate three Tier-3 data centres in the UK
Hyperscale partnerships
Our strong relationships with Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services expand the breadth of our offering
Network operations centres
We support 24/7 infrastructure monitoring and management from bases in the UK, Romania and Vietnam
Consultancy
We work with organisations to determine their ideal solution, based on our extensive public sector experience
The benefits
- Consume cloud services rapidly and securely
- Transition to an infrastructure with at least 99.9% availability
- Increase future agility and scalability of the IT environment
- Enable and accelerate effective workload provisioning
- Right-size support levels, from simple maintenance to full managed service
- Cut costs through shared platforms and infrastructures
- Improve cost visibility through consumption-based reporting
Organisations that invest in modern technology and processes will enjoy improved workplace productivity that generates business stability, growth and success. That’s because employees have everything they need to work anywhere, any time and on any device.
We leverage all our 45 years of expertise, and our status as a long-standing Microsoft Gold Certified and Competency Partner, to help our customers transform their productivity, and transform how their Microsoft environments enable that productivity:
Windows 10 Transformation
Our consultants engage with our customers to develop solutions and strategies that revolutionise user experiences. We design, test and deploy Windows 10 and Office365 platforms that include unified communications strategies, enterprise collaboration platforms and application integration.
Microsoft Evergreen
Our Microsoft Lifecycle as a Service (MLaaS) facility makes it easy for organisations to maintain and securely manage all of their Microsoft environments.
The benefits
- Design and deploy your future workplace with world-class professional services
- Leverage the latest Microsoft technologies
- Use established, proven processes around deployment
- Support future workplace environments with cost-effective managed services
Retail organisations are constantly looking to improve their productivity and to reduce their cost base including within the management of their IT asset estate. However, many organisations are struggling to take advantage of new ways of working and transform digitally because they cannot afford to refresh their estate, or because the management of their IT supply chain is inefficient and complex.
SCC offers flexible options to ensure our customers always have the right devices, at the right time, with security, viability and sustainability always in focus:
Device as a Service (DVaaS)
Deploying DVaaS simplifies the purchasing, management and refresh strategy of an organisation’s devices. We provide state-of-the-art devices chosen from a mutually agreed service catalogue and collect them for secure wiping at the end of the term.
Supply Chain Services
We provide a comprehensive service across all six key stages of the supply chain: Procurement, Configuration, Data Security, Storage, IMAC Services (Installs, Moves, Additions and Changes) and Recycling. This is based around our LifecycleTM catalogue tool where customers can conduct product and service transactions online, our Commissioning Centre for all types of hardware and peripherals, and our zero-landfill Recycling Service for secure data erasure and destruction of end-of-life devices.
The benefits
- Enjoy a fully managed asset lifecycle service
- Benefit from our accreditation with Tier 1 manufacturers
- Manage costs effectively through our internal financing solution
- Meet sustainability goals through refurbishment and recycling services
- Maintain a secure, up-to-date, flexible estate of assets
Retail organisations must respond to increased competition by changing business models, adopting IT innovations and creating market differentiation, all whilst trying to minimise costs and maximise margins. However, many end up with a complex software estate that can be time-consuming and expensive to manage. SCC’s Software Asset Lifecycle Management service involves working with organisations to evaluate their technology and licensing contracts, assessing software usage and identifying any issues and commercial risks. Providing insight into their software estates puts organisations back in control and highlights areas of rationalisation to provide savings, while ensuring compliance with both vendors and legal regulations. To ensure our customers can achieve optimum value from their software estates, we deliver clear management reports and recommendations for improving efficiency and mitigating risk. We can also provide best-in-class tools to monitor and track usage effectively, ensuring compliance with vendor licensing requirements, where non-compliance carries significant fines and reputational risk.
The benefits
- Encourage new ways of interacting with other departments, partners and supply chain companies
- Gain complete visibility and control of the software estate
- Predict software spend accurately
- Enable collaboration and cost certainty with a common multi-agency software platform
- Increase compliance and licence optimisation
- Reduce costs through SCC’s buying power and licence optimisation
Having resilient network connectivity is absolutely critical to the efficient operation for retailers as they transform their business models to take advantage of innovations and new technology that needs ‘always-on’ connectivity.
SCC’s range of Networking services can significantly improve network capabilities, keep them up-to date and reduce complexity across the whole network infrastructure:
Network Assurance
SCC can assess the critical components of the network and validate their fitness for purpose.
Network Solutions
We can identify future needs, taking into account future bandwidth, resilience and availability, identifying the technologies that will work best for the organisation.
Network Managed Service
From an initial assessment through to design, implementation, managed and optimisation services, we take our customers on a journey of modernising their network infrastructure and then provide ongoing support that covers areas such as Local Area Networks (LAN), Wireless, Wide Area Network (WAN), data centre and security.
The benefits
- Deliver robust and reliable network infrastructures that underpin business transformation
- Eliminate potential downtime by proactively identifying and resolving outages
- Improve network performance levels
- Reduce business risk by enhancing network security
- Enable on-going technology adoption, training and optimisation
With cyber threats and attacks on the rise, businesses in this sector must take a proactive approach to finding and resolving vulnerabilities. Achieving this is critical to minimising any risk to customer data, the business’s financial standing or its reputation.
SCC helps customers develop a comprehensive security strategy that encompasses every stage of the security lifecycle. This portfolio spans four vital areas:
Predict
A consultative approach where we work with our customers to assess and evaluate their current security position.
Prevent
In the current marketplace, changing business models can indirectly cause an organisation’s attack surface to grow.
Detect
SCC’s Cyber Security Service (CSS) ensures customers get access to best- in-class threat detection services, delivered by a dedicated and experienced operations team.
Respond
We provide incident response services and remediation tasks, so that customers can prepare for security breaches, minimise their impact, and take their protection and risk management to the next level.
The benefits
- Protect the reputation and productivity of the organisation
- Secure valuable confidential information, software and networks
- Cut the cost of security monitoring, risk assurance and in-house skills
- Enable a proactive approach to cyber security
- Tailor a service to the maturity of a particular security strategy
- Support ongoing compliance strategies
Every day, employees in the retail sector challenge their organisations to deliver an improved service and resolve problems rapidly and permanently, so that organisations can focus on their core objectives rather than the day-to-day maintenance of their infrastructure.
Our service desk offering combines traditional and next-generation services with our own innovative virtual agent platform:
Service Desk
SCC’s Service Desk, built on 20 years of experience, blends modern technology with standards-based, proven service management practice to ensure that our services align to an organisation’s objectives, culture and infrastructure.
TrinITy Virtual Agent
SCC’s affordable virtual agent gives users interactive, AI-based support through access to instant, automated self-help services. TrinITy can understand complex enquiries and deliver clear answers that are personalised to the individual user, while learning over time to constantly improve the service it can deliver.
The benefits
- Scale as required and only pay for what they need
- Drive continuous service improvement through ongoing learning and knowledge base development
- Access new services quickly through rapid transitioning
- Right-size support, from consultancy to a full managed service
- Use solutions accredited to ISO 20000-1, ISO 9000 and ISO 27001 for Information Security
Retail Brochure
SCC Retail brochure
Explore how SCC can help overcome your challenges within the Retail sector.
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