Retail Solutions
Innovative solutions for retail
Today's retail environment is characterized by tighter consumer budgets, rapidly expanding product selections, longer leaner supply chains, and tougher competition. Large and small retailers alike require solutions in the context of the retail business environment to meet strategic goals such as controlling costs, enhancing customer experience, and improving business execution.
Windstream partners with retailers to address the key challenges and issues that affect them, providing targeted business solutions that enable retailers to reduce costs, enhance competitiveness and improve relationships across the value chain – from suppliers to consumers.
Business challenges:
Manage multiple locations efficiently
Retail organizations are highly distributed enterprises whose business processes extend from storefronts to headquarters and the supply chain. With pressure from competitors and customers to provide advanced real-time services, retailers need a new way to integrate. Our industry-leading network solutions can connect stores to headquarters and one another enabling real-time voice, video, and Internet communications using the secure and reliable architecture of our extensive IP backbone.
Enhance customer experience
Network technologies play a major role in the retail experience. To avoid delays at the checkout counter, sensitive data has to move quickly and securely through multiple “points of service” and authorizations. Windstream can help you leverage our high-bandwidth services for retail applications through our highly redundant, carrier-class network.
Control costs
Managing inventory, organizing employees, and keeping customers happy - the basics of a successful retail operation - haven't changed much over the years. However, the ways you achieve these goals have evolved. With the right technology from Windstream, you can do more with less.
Secure customer data
Retail is heavily targeted by cybercrime. In order to keep a customer’s trust and repeat business, retailers need robust network security and protection 24/7 to safeguard their customer data and credit transactions. Windstream’s enterprise security solutions provide outstanding protection for retailers who are seeking security of consumer information against today’s increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.
Solutions from Windstream:
Store systems are ideally served by our enterprise-level dedicated Internet access solutions in order to ensure an enhanced customer experience. Reduce long check-out lines through faster POS transmissions and credit card authorizations with a reliable and dedicated T-1 Internet connection to your business over Windstream’s carrier-class robust IP backbone.
Windstream Ethernet Internet supports business growth and enables retailers to compete more effectively. Ethernet Internet will help you to improve business execution, increase productivity and realize cost efficiencies, from end-of-day batch processing, website and domain hosting, to Web-based point of sale terminals. Ethernet Internet offers affordable dedicated bandwidth that’s secure, easily scalable, and offers the plug-and-play simplicity of Ethernet.
Windstream VPN networks remote retail locations to headquarters with the highest level of security to provide real-time, distributed access to key inventory management, point-of-sale systems, supplier databases, and other centralized resources and applications. Windstream VPN provides a robust, reliable platform for integrating voice, video, and Internet applications into the retail environment improving staff productivity, customer satisfaction, and business competitiveness. Windstream VPN supports a variety of dedicated access methods including T-1 and Ethernet.
Retailers need constant monitoring to keep customer data and credit transaction safe and secure. Windstream’s managed security solution delivers outstanding protection against today’s sophisticated cyber threats with a single unified threat management system, including anti-virus protection, stateful firewalls, and intrusion prevention and detection. Productivity enhancing site-to-site IPSec VPN, remote access VPN, local WiFi access, and Web content filtering options are also available.
Merge your voice and data networks onto one secure network for maximum value and efficiency. The integration of data and voice systems lets retail organizations implement call centers that provide attendants who can speak with customers while viewing their user profiles, sales orders and billing data. Windstream retail solutions support these services in a secure environment, safeguarding customer and business data enterprise-wide.
Online catalogs. Web-based storefronts. Email promotions. Windstream has a number of web solutions designed to help keep you connected with your customers and enhance customer loyalty.
As a retailer, you must connect with partners, suppliers, warehouses, stores, employees, and consumers. This extended enterprise model has tremendous business benefits but can be costly and interfere with productivity. Windstream integrated Conferencing solutions help you collaborate better with suppliers and employees and lowers operating costs too.