How the Cloud Can Lift Sales in the Retail Industry

July 14, 2014

The retail industry can be brutal for business. Between margin pressures, customer demands and unpredictable, real-time changes in market conditions, it’s a tough climate for organizations.In order to survive and thrive, retailers around the globe are looking to adopt technologies, such as the cloud, that will give them the agility, control and efficiencies they need to stay ahead of the market.Here are three key themes I share with retailers that can help them assess where and how the cloud could reduce or eliminate some of their biggest grievances:1. Getting the right data to the right employeesRetailers with multiple locations face the difficult challenge of getting the right HR paperwork, sales training materials, financial documents, intellectual property and marketing collateral in the right hands at the right time.Doing this can be pretty simple if businesses utilise the right types of cloud-based file-sharing solutions that enable permissioning and security controls.Using such programmes, administrators can easily set up accounts for different departments and authorise access to certain files and folders, and restrict them from others.With contractors and the sometimes high turnover in certain sections of organisations, admins can grant access with time limits to business files or cut access when employees or contractors leave.2. Providing new opportunities for collaborationDepartments across the company need tools for collaborating inside and outside of the office.If a supply-chain manager from one location in New York needs to share and collaborate on inventory plans or presentations with a manager in London, they need a simple way to share these presentation files without clogging email.The same cloud-based platform should alleviate this issue with public and private link sharing to enhance security and keep files organised and tracked by versions in one location.3. Managing your personnel – and their filesWhen it comes to employee training and annual reviews, businesses need a central location in their cloud app to access and manage data for each and every employee.Employees can take new hire tests and upload them into their employee folder, as well as having easy and quick access to the employee handbook, team schedules and guidelines, all in the same place.The managers can also easily access all their team members’ folders and store all of the necessary paperwork throughout the history of their employment at the company.