Shop ‘til you Drop (Packets)

Retailers must adapt to increasing digital complexity to meet consumer demands in 2023. Businesses are feeling the pressure to support heavy volumes of online shopping traffic and maintain peak performance. Congested networks and packet loss can really put a wrinkle into online shopping plans—and a bad experience can have a lasting impact on consumer behavior.

Over the course of 2023, 67% of retailers surveyed are expecting that the number of digital assets they have to manage will increase. However, only 32% say they are prepared to effectively handle this increase. This lack of confidence stems largely from reliance on outdated or misused technology. The new year brings retailers a new opportunity to evaluate their existing technology stacks and implement performance management solutions to help them scale their business and become more agile. From digital merchandising processes to inventory management operations to ecommerce strategies, retailers will need to reevaluate their existing technology to support the sustained growth of online shopping.

While there may be temptation to bite the bullet and scrap old technologies to replace them with something shiny and new, this is not necessarily the best path to improving performance—and certainly is not always the most cost-effective. The key to maintaining healthy, scalable business processes is maintaining a clear line of visibility and understanding the root cause of degradations and disruptions. By reducing mean time to knowledge (MTTK), retailers can effectively pinpoint the cause of network and application slowdowns and reduce mean time to repair (MTTR). 

For companies embracing digital transformation and working to stay ahead of the curve, performance management used in their existing environment provides them with valuable trended information on utilization. When making business decisions for implementing new technology, these companies can call on actual evidence from their own performance data, making migrations and technology transformations more successful and less volatile. Post-implementation, the same analysis can be used to streamline troubleshooting efforts and increase operational efficiency.

NETSCOUT nGenius Enterprise Performance Management provides retailers with end-through-end visibility into their networks and mission-critical applications. Smart data delivers real-time intelligence and a deep, packet-level understanding of performance issues in any environment. For retailers seeking to grow and scale operations, these insights are crucial when assessing existing technology and evaluating performance capabilities.

Learn more about how NETSCOUT solutions help retailers iron out network and application performance issues.