At this year’s annual National Retail Federation (NRF) show in New York, enterprise software firm, VMware, showcased how its partnering with companies, including Chemist Warehouse, to build a digital foundation to modernise the retail experience.
The retail industry is more competitive and dynamic than ever and technology drives almost every step of the retail experience – in-store, warehouses, supply chain, and back offices. VMware Retail Solutions are designed to evolve legacy retail infrastructure into modern digital foundations with mobile workflows that can increase customer satisfaction and workforce productivity.
By speeding up digital and in-store service delivery and reducing complexity, VMware software-defined data center (SDDC) solutions improve processes from checkout to supply chain management. Flexible, more secure, and cloud-ready digital infrastructure from VMware improves operational models to help create frictionless retail environments.
Australian pharmaceuticals, health, and beauty retailer, Chemist Warehouse has worked with VMware to virtualise its compute, storage and networking infrastructure with VMware’s suite of SDDC solutions. This has enabled Chemist Warehouse to unify and automate these IT environments with the same architectural structure extending from the data center to the pharmacy floor.
Chemist Warehouse Group general manager of IT, Simon Hibbert said the retailer is committed to finding new ways to engage customers at every touchpoint. “The higher levels of standardisation and automation achieved through virtualisation enabled our team to improve the agility and performance of our operations. This optimisation ultimately helps us deliver solutions which allow our staff to focus on our customer rather than technology. The VMware portfolio has been instrumental in our agility and has allowed us to scale our store base and offering globally.”