Five Ways Riverbed’s Portfolio Drives Retail Performance

In today’s competitive retail landscape, delivering exceptional customer and employee experiences and optimizing operational efficiency are critical for success. In our recent 2023 Riverbed Global Digital Employee Experience (DEX) Survey, which polled 1,800 IT and business decision-makers across 10 countries and seven industries, 93% of the retail leaders who responded agreed IT is more responsible for driving business innovation now than it was three years ago. Still, 89% claim that slow-running systems and applications and outdated technology are directly impacting the growth and performance of their organization.

Retailers like you need to follow the 90% planning to accelerate digital experience adoption and implementation, seeking out advanced tools that provide real-time insights, enable proactive monitoring, and empower data-driven decision-making. Especially when preparing for a busier Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Singles Day, where you’ll undoubtedly see traffic explode.

In simple terms, this means implementing unified observability solutions: the tools that give you a complete picture of every process, system, and level of the technology stack in simple-to-read, easy-to-understand dashboards. Ninety-two percent of retail survey respondents agree there must be greater investment in unified observability solutions that provide actionable insights for better employee and customer digital experiences.

This is where Riverbed’s unified observability product suite can help. Here’s five of many ways in which it can:

Support real-time performance monitoring

Customer expectations have never been higher–and your competitors have never been in easier reach. That’s why it’s more important than ever that your digital infrastructure performs flawlessly, delivering the exceptional digital experiences consumers demand.

Riverbed provides real-time performance monitoring, enabling retailers to promptly track and optimize their systems. One organization using Riverbed improved page load time by 30%, leading to a 32% rise in customer engagement (that is, the number of customers completing transactions).

Enhance customer satisfaction

It’s impossible to meet customers where they are without… well, knowing where they are. Gaining a deep insight into customer interactions and behaviour allows you to see what shoppers want, need and value the most; where things are going right; and where experiences could be improved.

By analyzing user journey data, optimizing website flows, and personalizing experiences, retailers can meet and exceed customer expectations, leading to improved brand loyalty and higher customer retention rates. In fact, our retail customers have experienced up to a 30% increase in customer satisfaction scores.

Reduce mean time to repair

There’s little more that’s frustrating or costly than downtime and performance issues. But having intelligent monitoring capabilities enables proactive issue detection and resolution. Don’t just take it from us either, the Head of IT Operations at our customer Halkbank said: “With automated alerts, mean time to resolution is almost at zero. We can see an anomaly as it happens and resolve it before it impacts service. This actionable insight ensures optimum performance and a great customer experience.”

By proactively identifying and addressing performance bottlenecks, retailers can maximize revenue opportunities and provide uninterrupted service to their customers–moving from reactive to proactive problem-solving.

Optimize store operations

Your success depends on the efficiency of your store, both online and in your brick-and-mortar branches. Research shows that in 2023, the omni-channel retail experience is in high demand, especially as holiday shoppers skate between sites, apps, and physical stores to purchase gifts and goodies. This has made IT more complex for retailers as they scramble to provide the same premier service across every touchpoint. But unified observability can make things simpler and smoother; 98% of retail leaders agree it’s important (58% say critically important) to stay competitive and deliver seamless user experiences.

Riverbed helps retailers monitor and optimize various aspects of operations, including point-of-sale (POS) systems, inventory management, and employee productivity. This allows retailers to enhance the overall shopping experience and drive profitability while boosting employee satisfaction and freeing up staff members’ time to work on more strategic tasks or complete training. This would be particularly useful, given that 39% of retail survey leaders believe they’re understaffed, while 38% have enough employees but not enough with the key skills to do their jobs.

Empower data-driven decision-making

Data-driven decision-making is a competitive advantage in the retail industry. Riverbed equips retailers with powerful analytics, user journey data and reporting features, so they can make informed decisions, optimize business strategies, and stay ahead of the competition.

In an anonymous, impartial Gartner Peer Spot review, one of our customers told us: “Riverbed enables us to see exactly what users see as they engage with applications. So rather than the user complaining, we get to know in advance and will see what the hiccups are. We can correlate the user experience. It makes troubleshooting easy.”

In short, Riverbed’s unified observability product suite is a game-changer for the retail industry, equipping businesses with the tools to transform their performance and drive success. Offering real-time performance monitoring, enhanced customer satisfaction, proactive issue resolution, optimized store operations, and data-driven decision-making, it truly revolutionizes how retailers operate.

Get in touch with our team today, and let’s chat about how Riverbed can empower the experience for your retail business.