Enhance Retail Experiences and Operations with F5 and Azure

While large crowds certainly attract interest, grossly inefficient purchasing processes can dissuade potential buyers. A recent consumer survey found that 75% of people will abandon a physical line before it’s their turn.¹ To hopefully prevent those possible sales from walking out the door, many retailers rely on modern applications and services, such as mobile point-of-sale systems and up-to-date stockroom inventory calculations, to empower employees to provide efficient and accurate customer service.

Retailers can use Azure Stack to build, deploy, and run applications consistently across their entire IT ecosystems from location to location, ensuring employees have access to accurate data and the tools necessary to make better decisions for efficient service. With F5 BIG-IP, employees can deliver exceptional customer service with high-performance applications across on-premises, cloud, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.

The elaborate and interconnected systems, machinery, people, and processes required to transport goods from producers to stores can be fraught with points of failure. Factor in the precision-timing that’s foundational to just-in-time inventory, and it’s no surprise that many retailers suffer supply chain issues. In 2022, 45% of surveyed U.S. grocery shoppers said they are concerned about out-of-stock items, as many of their favorite products are often unavailable.²

Retailers can integrate Azure solutions into their supply chain operations to increase agility and gain visibility for precision inventory management. For instance, retailers can use Azure IoT to connect disparate data sources that are crucial to supply chain success to the cloud and use Azure AI to simulate scenarios and generate prescriptive recommendations to enhance the reliability of just-in-time deliveries. Retailers can seamlessly lift and shift supply chain applications to Azure with F5 NGINX. By migrating to Azure and operating hybrid cloud environments, F5 enables retailers to meet elastic consumer demand by improving supply chain fulfillment, sourcing, and logistics.

The popularity of online shopping is exploding, with over 268 million digital buyers in the U.S. in 2022.³ Consumers sharing their personal identifiable information (PII) and financial data online with retailers inevitably attracts the nefarious attention of malicious actors. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that ransomware attacks on retailers are on the rise, with a 67% year-over-year increase in 2022 compared to 2021.⁴

With this wealth of data, retailers can use Azure AI and machine learning capabilities to gain a better understanding of customer trends and patterns and design marketing campaigns and experiences that provide optimal return on investment. F5 Distributed Cloud Bot Defense ensures that valuable data is kept pristine by preventing credential stuffing bots from diluting the data and that customers have a secure shopping experience regardless of how they digitally interact with the retailer.

F5 provides retailers with industry-leading security and performance solutions for all the mission-critical Azure applications and services they use throughout their business operations. F5 enables retailers to realize tremendous value from their Azure investments, empowering employees to enhance customer satisfaction, optimize supply chain agility, and run secure marketing campaigns that drive revenue growth.

Available in the Azure Marketplace, F5 solutions are simple for retailers to procure, install, and operate within their existing technology stacks. F5 delivers faster time to value with flexible consumption models so retailers can continue to provide customers with exceptional experiences.

To learn more, visit: https://www.f5.com/products