5 Ways AI can drive better retail networking in South Africa
With Artificial
Intelligence (AI) innovations dominating the news, you’ve likely already heard
how AI for IT Operations (AIOps) is set to revolutionise almost everything. Like
many other local business leaders, you probably have high expectations of the
benefits AI will bring to your IT department. Indeed, almost 50% of South African organisations say this is the most important area
where they expect to see performance improvements. Not surprisingly, for most,
elevated customer experience is the top anticipated outcome.
To benefit even
further from advances in AI, the next thing that should be on your radar is something
called AI Networking, which will be particularly relevant if you’re responsible
for wireless, wired, and wide area networks (WAN).
Before we explore this
new facet of AI innovation, let’s take a step back. Reviewing a few definitions
will help you better understand the key characteristics of an effective AI
solution, and provide clarity around how AI, machine learning (ML), and
automation can help your retail organisation.
What AIOps can do
for your IT team
AIOps, a term coined by Gartner, is a solution that uses big data
and ML to automate IT operations processes such as anomaly detection and
causality determination. It’s like DevOps in that it consolidates service and
performance management, teaming this with automation to deliver continuous
insights that enable improvement.
So, where do networking,
storage, and support services fit into the equation? Gartner clarified these
roles in a new term: AI Networking. A subset of AIOps, AI Networking is
considered a more efficient way to manage Day 2 network operations – the phase after design and implementation, when your team is analysing
and optimising the modern networking system.
To reiterate, AIOps
refers to the broader infrastructure managed by your information and operations
(I&O) teams. AI Networking, on the other hand, sits within the broader
infrastructure, but is specific to work around your wired, wireless, and WAN
networks. AIOps — and, more specifically, AI Networking — provides you with intelligent
automation, so that you can quickly see and respond to connectivity issues, or
even prevent network outages. Given the sheer volume of cloud-based services, digital
users, and IoT devices across the various locations your retail network
supports, it enables you to handle this work far faster than is humanly
possible.
Use cases for AI
Networking
Recently we’ve seen
major local retailers like Shoprite draw on
AI-powered solutions to elevate a wide range of operations, from predicting
trends to optimising inventory, reducing waste and boosting customer
experience. Already, intelligent
AI-powered solutions are also helping IT pros solve today’s biggest retail
networking challenges. A few examples of business use-cases are listed below.
·
Remote management of multiple stores. Today, it’s standard to see centralised
IT teams managing dispersed locations. With this in mind, AI Networking
features provide near-real-time visibility into network activity wherever it is
taking place. This includes determining which devices are being connected to
networks, identifying sites that are struggling with LAN or WAN issues, and
collecting essential data logs automatically. You also receive AI-powered
alerts that help you triage the most urgent troubleshooting issues.
·
Accurate identification of issues. In the same way that ML models are
designed to point out patterns of behavior and deviations from them, AI Networking
insights and alerts help you uncover wireless, wired, and WAN gateway issues
that traditional tools miss. For instance, AI Networking can help you see the
difference between a device that’s misbehaving due to a hardware failure or
something intermittent that a firmware upgrade can fix.
·
Improvement of user journeys. Modern customers not only expect products
that meet their needs; they also demand high-quality in-store experiences.
Subsequently, IT departments need to find ways to deliver exceptional guest and
employee access, in an environment where technical expertise is often sparse
and on-site troubleshooting can be difficult. The most advanced AI Networking
features address this challenge by recommending how you can boost network
performance, without costly upgrades, while delivering on operational
expectations and customer experiences at the same time.
When you’re deciding
on a suitable networking solution, you should be exploring how AI plays a role
in it. Today, always-on networks are a competitive advantage in the retail
landscape, so it’s important that you consider how AIOps can provide you with
actionable insights, help you automate tasks to free up IT resources for higher-value
projects, and give you the ability to improve business and competitive outcomes
overall.
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