Don’t Miss Out on Business-Changing Data and Insights This Holiday Season

The 2021 holiday season is expected to break records when it comes to holiday shopping spending, according to both the Adobe Digital Economy Index and the National Retail Federation. To take advantage of this growth, retail organizations need efficient and cost-effective ways to gather data and actionable insights from every step of the value chain.

Analytical insights, not just data, drive success

Depending on the size of an organization, retailers can have access to anywhere from tens of thousands to billions of data packets from hundreds of sales and marketing touch points. The first challenge is collecting that data – insights will only be as good as the data they are based on – and the second challenge is transforming data into actionable insights as quickly as possible. For the best ROI, organizations need insights delivered in real-time.

How are they meant to accomplish this without exhausting their IT resources? The key is bringing onboard an AI-based WiFi automation platform.

How does automation help?

Organizations rely on accurate data and predictive analytics so that they can respond proactively to changing business conditions. AI automation platforms make this possible by analyzing the entire network ecosystem, 24/7, in real-time, learning to recognize normal and abnormal network behavior and alerting IT accordingly.

In other words, these platforms transform optimizing and troubleshooting operations from time-consuming, manual, and reactive, to quick, automatic, and proactive.

Where should insights come from?

From as many touch points as possible, remembering that most business processes depend on the WiFi network. This includes IoT devices that monitor the performance of production equipment and track warehousing inventory, mobile devices used by employees to communicate with each other and with customers, point of sale devices, apps, online websites, and more.

To deliver the most complete and the richest insights, data should be collected from every single device connected to and using the network. This includes backend infrastructure as data will be lost if the network is performing suboptimally, and no data can be collected at all if the network stops working entirely.

What is needed to gather the most useful insights?

An AI-based automation platform should deliver the following if it is going to help organizations respond to changing conditions in real-time and predict future needs:

Automatic analytics and proactive alerts

While this was touched on above, it deserves to be repeated. One of the best capabilities these platforms offer is real-time insights. These insights – automatically delivered to IT – allow organizations to respond to network performance changes before end users are affected. This not only improves employee productivity, but also a brand’s reputation with customers.

Complete visibility

There should be no mysteries left on the network once an organization starts working with a platform. The entire network ecosystem should be monitored and analyzed 24/7 – and this includes when network tests are running. Be sure to work with a platform with at least three WiFi radios to accomplish this task.

Remember, any data that is lost translates to lost insights – avoid this if at all possible.

Remote capabilities

Is your IT team constantly onsite? Probably not. This makes it absolutely critical to have IoT sensors onsite to analyze the network and enable IT to troubleshoot issues remotely. With remote capabilities, the network can be optimized at any time, from any location. Without them, organizations spend time and money waiting for resolutions as IT is required to travel onsite before troubleshooting can begin.

Scheduled testing for consistent end user quality metrics

Regularly scheduled testing is recommended as additional proactive support. Automating the testing process ensures that IT receives regular updates on network performance and can respond to identified issues when they occur, rather than waiting for end users to report them.

Historical analytics

Historical analytics are a must for future-proofed planning. These analytics allow decision makers to see long-term trends in network performance and behavior that often aren’t apparent with spot checks or even consistent real-time alerts.

Use these analytics to answer questions like:

• How did the network perform at peak times?
• How did that performance change throughout the year?
• Is the network nearing capacity? How was it impacted by seasonal hires?

Vendor agnostic

Finally, we recommend that AI-based automation platforms be vendor agnostic. This allows them to be used at any location, shortens training time as IT only needs to know how to use one platform, and ensures that the platform will continuously provide analytics, even if an organization switches vendors.

What ROI is possible?

The Wireless Intelligence Platform™ delivers:

• 90% faster Mean-Times-to-Resolution
• 70% fewer WiFi problem tickets
• 80% fewer remote site visits

Learn more about it today and ask us about a demo and free trial.