To meet the needs of today’s shoppers by offering an excellent omni-channel experience, retailers need to automate and accelerate the distribution of real-time information across supply chain, e-commerce, and in-store operations. It’s not easy though…
“Digital business professionals view omnichannel capabilities as both a keystone for their companies’ digital engagement strategies and an imperative to meet shoppers’ rapidly changing expectations. And that’s despite the significant time, capital, and change management commitments required to execute these projects. As a result, omnichannel roadmaps are rarely simple documents; they often contain many complex initiatives that touch departments across the enterprise.”
(Source: Paving The Path To Omnichannel Commerce, Brendan Witcher, Dec. 31, 2021)
Fortunately, we’ve helped the likes of companies in all kinds of industries revolutionize their business with real-time information. My colleague and Solace’s CTSO Sumeet Puri – who has been a key part of many of our customers’ journeys – just published a new version of his popular architects guide to implementing EDA that’s designed to help architects in the retail sector use event-driven architecture (EDA) to improve the responsiveness and resilience of their IT systems.
The Architect’s Guide to Real-Time RetailHow retail IT professionals can architect for resilience and rapid response by leveraging event-driven architecture.He starts by explaining how important it is to adopt an event-driven mindset before you try to make use of all the real-time data that will be flowing to and from across your organization as the result of digital transformation initiatives the revolve around new tools like artificial intelligence and machine learning, streaming analytics, cloud services, and of course the Internet of Things.
“As retailers respond to the pandemic, and strive to stay connected to their customers, they must embrace a digital-first mindset and upgrade their IT systems to provide real-time responses to consumers. Event-driven architecture is the enabling paradigm for this mindset.”
– Sumeet Puri, CTSO, Solace
Simply put, EDA is the key that unlocks the value of all that real-time data so you can do things like:
With goals like those in mind, which I’m sure you’ll agree represent a ton of ROI, Sumeet gives a retail-centric take on the proven 6-step process that he’s seen all kinds of enterprises (including retailers like EDEKA and Les Mousquetaires) use to start down the path to EDA. It covers everything you need to know from identifying the right first use case to tackle, putting in place the tools you need to succeed (e.g. an event mesh built with event brokers, and an event portal) and using the ROI you realize to spur “rinse and repeat” across your organization.
If you’re responsible for making sure your retail organization’s IT infrastructure is ready to take your company to new heights, I suggest you read it now!