Retailers are ramping up digital transformation to keep pace with the demanding, connected post-COVID consumer and improve operational efficiency in a time of rising inflation. As they accelerate migration to the cloud and evolve towards an omnichannel business model, retailers often find that costs and wastage in their IT and telecoms environments start to rise.
This is the result of their technology environments becoming more complex, with many retail groups operating vast networks spanning warehouses, offices, and stores in hundreds of locations. Higher levels of mobile and remote work add even more complexity to the mix, as does the shift from Capex IT purchases to opex spending with public cloud providers.
The good news is that smarter retailers can take control of the technology expenses and drive costs down in a systemic and sustainable manner. The key to achieving this goal is adopting cutting-edge technology expense management (TEM) and FinOps tools, frameworks, and practices to impose cost discipline and simplify cloud security and networking operations.
Smarter tracking and analysis
TEM solutions and tools enable a smarter way for companies to monitor, track and analyse spending on cloud and telecom services. These tools help organisations to predict costs and eliminate bill shock across their mobile, fixed-line, wide area network and cloud usage, spend, and performance.
Smarter TEM tools are integrated with cloud and telecom providers as well as ERP systems to automate cloud expense management, providing retailers with full visibility and control of the entire technology environment from a single interface. Retailers can use cutting-edge TEM tools to simplify cost management as well as support FinOps processes in their cloud environments.
TEM enables retailers to discover and address issues such as employee overspending, overbilling, and other irregularities on the part of their vendors, and redundant or unused contracts and services. It also supports them with the insights to they need choose and negotiate the correct cloud and telecom services and contracts for their business.
Furthermore, TEM provides visibility into how cloud and telecom products and services are consumed by a particular region, branch, cost centre, or end-user within the company. Retailers can use this data to guide the accurate allocation of charges to a branch, department, or employee.
Partners for your digital transformation journey
Take the example of a major retailer spanning 18 brands with over 2500 stores in South Africa. The business lacked visibility in its large, complex telecoms environment and required smarter cost and operational optimisations. It worked with our knowledgeable team to implement a TEM solution and accelerate digital transformation.
Within 12 months, it was able to simplify operations and start seeing a return on investment. Negotiation of lower call rates resulted in an effective call-rate reduction of 51% while identifying inactive fixed lines meant the organisation could save 45% of costs on redundant infrastructure. Exception reports allowed for the identification of out-of-bundle costs through mobile devices.
As retailers continue their digital transformation journey, smarter ways of managing costs will only become more important. Cutting-edge TEM and FinOps practices can help retailers to operate more efficiently in a thin-margin industry and harvest cost savings they can use to innovate.
The right TEM partner can help your retail business stay ahead of the curve. At Nebula, it’s our job to help our customers simplify operations and provide them with the information they need to do business better. Our knowledgeable team has years of experience in TEM and FinOps. You are assured we can guide your cost-optimisation journey to success.
Our TEM and FinOps solution—Nebula OneView—is a next-generation, Microsoft Gold Certified product that leverages the advantages of the cloud to provide enterprises with a high-performance, scalable system that enables next-generation telecoms and business innovation. For more information about the role of TEM in retail, please get in touch.