Black Friday and the holiday season is just around the corner. This is always the busiest time of the year for most retailers. 

This year, the season will be even more hectic as retailers work to maintain a sanitary store environment and ensure safe social distancing.

The high demand of the holidays puts retail technology through the full stress-test. And any disruption or discontinuity in your technology systems can have a direct impact on your store’s business during what could be the most lucrative time of the year.

That’s why at Spencer, we go above and beyond to make sure all our retailer clients are properly prepared before the rush of the holidays hit.

Already this year, we made sure thousands of stores were in good health and ready to operate for the holiday season. We create risk mitigation plans to have assets in stock and ready for deployment if anything breaks, with techs positioned to be onsite as soon as needed.

From complete store health checks to proactive monitoring and more, discover 4 ways we can help get your retail technology ready for the holidays.

1. Complete Store Health Checks

Many of our retail customers have technology in their stores that hasn’t been used since the last holiday season.

That’s why Spencer prioritizes “wiping the dust off” to make sure all your technology is fully-functional and ready to handle the holiday rush. 

Some of the tests our technicians perform are:

  • Clean up and test the network rack to make sure there are no issues.
  • Test the wireless signal strength.
  • Replicate checkout procedures on all point of sale equipment.
  • Test all other critical IT hardware such as peripherals and phones to ensure they’re working correctly and not missing any items.
  • Confirm traffic counting systems and loss prevention systems are working properly.
  • Perform backup failure tests to ensure your store receives the backup support it needs in case of an emergency.

After prepping each store location, we also provide an analysis on your store’s technological health, and complete any outstanding actions needed to get your store back to 100% before the holidays.

2. Optimize Client Inventory Levels

By analyzing last year’s holiday usage, we work with you to optimize your inventory stock for all critical devices. This ensures there’s always a replacement device ready for our team to deploy, with techs poised to be on-site as soon as needed.

Our systems provide real-time inventory reports with serial number level detail. We have devices pre-configured for you, so your store can simply open the package and be ready to go. 

When applicable, we’ll place mission-critical devices in stocking locations strategically positioned around your store locations to avoid shipping delays

3. Proactive Monitoring

Spencer now brings proactive monitoring directly to our retail partners. By adding our asset monitoring service, retailers can predict device breakdowns and address any issues before they even occur. 

We can provide faster resolution, and ensure your store sees less downtime with our proactive monitoring. And we can visit all the stores in your brand’s chain, or just the flagship stores.

4. On Site Technicians

Retailers have always relied on Spencer to make their holiday season a success. By partnering with our W-2 Field Technicians and Support Teams based in Medway MA, there’s always a trusted expert available to lean on. 

While our project team works all year to open new stores, upgrade systems, and complete rollouts, our service team is a huge part of our retail partners’ holiday season solution. 

Our technicians are able to be onsite in less than 4 hours — with the correct replacement part or device in hand. We’re the partner of choice to maintain retail store technology when staying up and running is critical.

At Spencer, we love the excitement of the holiday season and the new challenges it presents every year. With all the uncertainty that 2020 has presented, one thing we can be sure about is our commitment to support our retailers. 

Black Friday is almost here. Contact us today to make sure your retail technology is ready >