But despite being so vital to a brand’s success, frontline employees are often the last to be reached by the technology that retailers invests in. Typically, we see C-Suite and head office getting all the latest tech, while it takes time to trickle down to the shop floor. This has two major impacts.

Firstly, the majority of frontline workers feel underappreciated by their employers. According to a recent Retail Trust survey, The Health of Retail report 2021, many feel insecure, undervalued and uncertain in relation to their careers. In fact, 84 percent say their mental health has deteriorated since early 2020. And while this is undoubtedly connected to the impact of the last few years on the high street, there is work to be done to bridge the gap between the different levels of retail organisations, from C-Suite to the shop floor.

The other major impact is on the customer experience. Without the right tools in place, the in-store experience can feel impersonal and disconnected. Especially when comparing it to the increasingly personalised online shopping space. Here, consumers have become accustomed to being served highly personalised recommendations.

For me, empowering employees means giving them the right tools to do their best work. And in retail, that means the people on the shop floor having the right technology at their fingertips to allow them to access every type of information that customers need and expect.

Here I want to talk about some of the ways that retailers can start to empower their employees with technology. And as a result, create better customer experiences and a happier, more productive workforce.

Meeting customer expectations in-store

Like every industry, retail is still navigating the new ways of the world. Within that context, there’s a lot of uncertainty about what the future of the industry looks like and where we all fit in that jigsaw puzzle.

But one thing that has been shown clearly is that consumers are itching to get back into shops. The question is: what do those shops now look like?

Up until now, in-person retail has retained quite a consistent format. You go into the shop, you pick the product you want, you go to the checkout, and you leave. And that’s been okay until the last few years, when suddenly consumers started wanting more personal experiences.

That’s the impact of online shopping. Consumers go to the website of their retailer of choice. They get recommendations based on the data the company collects over time. Or they’ll get it personally by email. The challenge is to match this kind of personalisation in-store. And there are great benefits for retailers who manage achieve it.

Research suggests that customers will purchase more from a retailer if they shop both on their digital and in-store spaces. It underscores the importance of omni-channel retail. It also outlines a clear agenda for retailers moving forward: Striving to achieve intelligent retail. One where you connect to customers, your employees, and then your data as well, so that you can have that personalised experience in the store.

We’re already seeing many established retailers making their high street stores more like experience centres. So if you wanted to buy a Surface, for example, there’s the Microsoft Experience Centre in London. Here, you can come in and see the different devices, learn how you can interact with them, and try out accessories in-person. You may not buy the device there; you’re actually more likely to go home and order it online. But we’re definitely starting to see a blend of those online and physical channels.

It’s going to take time for everyone to catch up, especially if you’re a retailer with hundreds of stores nationwide. But devices are a great place to start with the transformation to a more blended, omni-channel shopping experience.

The importance of devices to omni-channel retail

As a society, we’ve become more used to having things instantly available at the tips of our fingers. Whether that’s a smartphone, a tablet, or a laptop, devices are what have driven the expectation. This is now being translated into retail.

With this rising expectation, retailers who don’t empower their employees to respond quicky and accurately to customers in-store are going to suffer.

Frontline retail employees need to be able to do on-the-spot inventory checks, so they don’t have to go and rummage around in the store room or warehouse, looking physically on the shelves to try and find something that could have been checked in seconds on a handheld device on the shop floor. Without those devices, they often find themselves less well-informed than the customers coming into their stores.

Devices have benefits for retail employees beyond their interactions with customers too. Retail spaces are often large. Having a designated device for communication between team members who could be scattered across the building space, or even on different sites, will make the operation more integrated and seamless from an operational point of view too. They will enhance the connection between the different levels of an organisation, helping to bridge the gap between the C-Suite and shopfloor.

This will empower employees to feel more integral to the business. At the same time, leadership teams can make better decisions based on a more accurate understanding of stores, because they’re able to get feedback from them directly.

And then of course there are the sustainability benefits of devices. M&S is a great example of a UK retailer that has embraced devices, allowing it to achieve its goal of going paperless. This is just one of many benefits the company is now reaping from its push to integrate new technologies across its operations.

Devices designed for the hybrid retail space

The ultimate role of devices in the retail space is to help create a great experience for customers. Whether that’s ordering something in for a customer online, checking inventory levels, or even checking what shifts people on a team are working so managers can make sure that the shop floor is filled with the right people at the right time. All of it comes back to enhancing the in-store experience.

But there’s an increasing understanding that within every retail space, there are different types of workers, and they have different needs. Frontline workers don’t want to walk around the shop floor with a laptop, because it’s heavy and there’s a security risk in putting it down in a busy retail space. Similarly, an information worker in the back office isn’t going to want to use a foldable in-your-palm device.  

At Microsoft, we’ve packaged this understanding into a cohesive offering for retailers. We’ve got lightweight, on-the-go devices like the Surface Go that are designed specifically for frontline workers who don’t want to be tethered to a PC. We’ve got other Surface devices designed for information processing, as well as Surface Hubs that can help improve in-office and hybrid collaboration – meaning everyone feels included.

And because our devices are specifically made to complement the Microsoft software stack, it means that retailers get the best experience from things like Microsoft Teams and Power BI when using them on their Surface. It helps to keep our employees connected with each other, and empowers them serve customers quickly and efficiently.

I am confident that this empowerment will translate into the evolution of the role of frontline workers, who can be there to genuinely support people with disabilities or accessibility needs, becoming much more of a helping hand to customers in-store. There always will be a need for that kind of support, as we adapt to the new world we find ourselves in.

Find out more

Learn how to harness digital for the future of retail

Personalise your organisation’s customer experience strategy

Microsoft Cloud for Retail

Device Decisions – The future is hybrid – considerations for IT leaders in the changing workplace

Technology can help unlock a new future for frontline workers

About the author

Joseph runs the Product and Marketing Strategy of our Surface Devices and Accessories for our Small Medium & Corporate (SMC) customers in Microsoft UK.

The post Empowering retail employees: How to transform the frontline appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

In the new world of work, it’s important to keep your people at the heart of your business. That’s why empowering them with the tools they need to work smarter will help you create an inclusive and resilient culture. A Forrester study found that workers realised almost two hours in daily productivity gains using Microsoft 365 on Surface, while reducing security breach costs by about 20 percent. We’re going to dive into the ways you can embrace the productivity gains of a robust security strategy, while empowering employees to do their best work from anywhere.

1.      Extend security across your entire stack

A security strategy needs to ensure your entire digital estate is secure. Ensure your entire stack is optimised with devices and applications that have built-in security based on a Zero Trust model. Surface meets the same security standards of all Microsoft software and services, making it a strategic part of your security stack.

But what is Zero Trust? It’s a security model that adapts to the new hybrid workplace and embraces mobility and remote working. By assuming breach, Zero Trust verifies each request or what resource it accesses regardless of where the request originates. By never trusting and always verifying, it ensures every access request is authenticated, authorised and encrypted before granting access.

This identity-based approach works in the background and enables things like single sign-on. Employees can, for example, sign into their Surface device with Windows Hello, a reliable, fully integrated biometric authentication based on facial recognition or fingerprint matching. Because the Surface optimises apps, it makes it easier for employees to work together. In fact, that same Forrester study I mentioned earlier also found that 88 percent of survey respondents said that Microsoft 365-powered Surface devices had helped their employees become more collaborative.

Construction firm Willmott Dixon saw an immediate improvement in productivity when using Surface and Microsoft 365. “A lot of our architects and engineers live quite far away. We now connect with them via Teams” says Simon Wilson, Senior Operations Manager. “We’ve seen projects that have reduced design time from 12 weeks to eight weeks. That is a true saving to the project.”

2.      Manage your security strategy your way

Zero Trust also helps your IT team manage your security infrastructure by combining threat protection, detection and response. Security can be managed from an easy to use control centre, protecting users, data, and endpoints. An integrated approach takes advantage of AI and automation. They take over low-level risk detection and real-time analytics to monitor and respond. This reduces chronic alert fatigue and means analysts can focus on critical alerts or higher threats.

The built-in security of Surface and Microsoft 365 makes it easy for your IT team to optimise to meet your specific needs. You can even go beyond traditional software-based policy management. Firmware configuration settings can deliver an extra level of hardware control and manageability. For example, the camera can be turned off for any device in highly secure areas to reduce risk. The built-in security of Surface and Microsoft 365 makes it easy for your IT team to optimise to meet your specific needs. You can even go beyond traditional software-based policy management. Firmware configuration settings can deliver an extra level of hardware control and manageability. For example, the camera can be turned off for any device in highly secure areas to reduce risk. Surface also benefits from three security features: Trusted Platform Module (TPM), Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) and Device Firmware Configuration Interface (DFCI).

TPM: This military-grade security protects the keys used in authentication and encryption.

UEFI: This protects the firmware from malicious attacks. Maintained by Microsoft, so that from the time the power button is pressed to the time that the operating system boots, organisations can avoid a critical vulnerability point and be assured that the latest UEFI updates are pushed out.

DFCI: Born from the Microsoft cloud offerings and enabled fast cloud deployment and management down to the firmware and component level. Benefit for those using AutoPilot via InTune, perfect for cloud first deployment, management and end of user decommission from your IT admin. DFCI gives users freedom to work from any location while still maintaining control and security.

Microsoft Surface Enterprise Management Mode (SEMM) is a feature of Surface devices with Surface UEFI that allows you to secure and manage firmware settings within your organization. With SEMM, IT professionals can prepare configurations of UEFI settings and install them on a Surface device.

While these make it easy for your IT team to manage, a compliant organisation often hears from employees that security measures make it harder for them to access the tools they need to work. When you have built-in security, you can ensure pain-free access without compromising the employee experience. A biometric single sign-on such as Windows Hello can make it faster for your employees to log in. Additions like multi-factor authentication can also reduce credential attacks by 99 percent.

The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) actively serves 25 million British citizens. Their cloud-first strategy allows them to be more agile and efficient. As a result of this approach, they are less reliant on expensive and hard-to-maintain on-premise infrastructure and are able to scale with the demands of business. By pairing this approach with Surface devices, they’re ensuring advanced security standards are applied from chip to cloud. “We’re making sure our solution covers all these security standards without limiting user experience,” says Nava Ramanan, Workplace Computing Lead Technical Architect at DWP.

3.      Minimise risk and reduce costs and complexity

With the right tools and devices it is possible to increase security and productivity while reducing costs and complexity. Surface powered by Microsoft 365 improves enterprise security by reducing both the number of security breaches and remediation costs—all without impacting workforce productivity or the employee experience. Forrester found that the number of annual breaches was reduced by 50 percent per year by using two-factor authentication, Advanced Threat Analytics, and Surface Enterprise Management Mode (SEMM).

By integrating new agile methods of device deployment and management, you can improve IT efficiency while reducing overheads. When combining Surface with Microsoft AutoPilot and Windows 10 Pro, IT teams saved four hours per device deployed.

As a local government, Warwickshire County Council is under increasing pressure to make resources go as far as possible while maintaining and improving services for its community. They made the bold decision to reduce costs by going from a combination of eight different devices to just one. They deployed Windows AutoPilot to optimise their IT team and ensure staff could start working straight out of the box.

“In just three months we migrated 4,500 staff to Microsoft 365 and Surface Pro. And less than one percent of users raised any issue with that at all,” says Craig Cusack, Assistant Director for Enabling Services.

Keeping workforce productivity at the heart of your security strategy

When you integrate your devices, apps and cloud security provisions, based on a Zero Trust principle, you can drive a highly orchestrated, centrally managed security solution. This makes it easier for your IT team to manage and deploy. It also embraces productivity and collaboration to ensure your employees stay secure and working at their best, even when remote.

UK law firm Shakespeare Martineau rolled out Surface devices to pair agility and freedom with improved end-point security, flexible productivity and practicality. In the end, it did much more, including improving morale, productivity and reducing downtime. They also saw an increase in billable hours and enhanced client satisfaction.

“Microsoft Surface complimented our strategy and was the device of choice to support our positive passionate people. The product is very good – in style, different ways of working and real performance – and it gives our staff the agility and freedom to work in a way that suits their lives whilst maximizing productivity and effectiveness,” says Dal Virdi, IT Director.

This also has the advantage of doing more with less. Implement new agile ways of working with a standardised portfolio that optimises the software and apps you run. Not only will this encourage your employees to work better together, but you’ll also benefit from improved efficiency and reduced overheads. That way you can spend more time innovating and delivering a great experience for the customers you support.

Find out more

Security and Endpoint Management with Surface: Surface for Business

Visit the website: Reimagine security and risk management

Download the eBook: Modernise your endpoint security strategy

Resources for your development team

Read the blog: Data security and encryption best practices

About the author

Chris is Surface for Business product portfolio lead for Microsoft in the UK. As the owner of the UK product proposition, Chris enjoys understanding business challenges and bringing together product propositions that empower individuals and businesses to achieve their business objectives. With over 13 years of experience in hardware technology, Chris has held a number of roles in Product Management, Marketing and Sales across the industry in the UK and abroad.

The post 3 ways to create a robust security strategy for remote teams appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.