BYOD: A Boon For Brick-And-Mortar

July 2013 Integrated Solutions For Retailers

By Chris Clark, president and chief operating officer, Fiberlink

BYOD can be a huge asset for retailers struggling to engage the connected consumer and convert mobile into sales.

When it comes to mobile, retail stands apart from most industries as the needs of both employees and consumers must be considered as part of the strategy. Retailers are focusing not only on their mobile workforce, but also how to deliver mobile apps for their customers to enhance the omni-channel experience and support marketing campaigns.

Topping the list of most common retail use cases for mobile are inventory lookup, product information access, and POS applications. Other areas of interest are loyalty program access, task management, inventory audit, and guided selling. Enabling this mobile ambition is the unenviable task of IT, from a systems readiness standpoint, but bring your own device (BYOD) could also prove to be the silver bullet brick-and-mortar has been seeking to help draw more people back into stores and keep them coming back.