Retail Peak Readiness

Javelin Group supports retailers and digital businesses in their preparation for peak trading, through analysis of anticipated traffic, IT processes and systems, to ensure they minimise the risk of revenue loss caused by critical weaknesses in these areas.

Our experience and methodical approach gives retailers a clear remediation plan to address high risk areas.

Whether it is Christmas, Black Friday or a Sale, we understand how critical the peak trading period is for retailers. For most, it is the difference between a successful year and a profits squeeze. It is also when customers are most dependent on retailers delivering on promises, and there is a real risk of a damaged reputation and lost trust if customers are let down.

For the technology underpinning the retail business, peak trading means many multiples of regular workload. Processes and systems are pushed to breaking point, often beyond, and these failures are increasingly visible to your customers in a digital world.

With our specific focus on retail technology and technical operations processes, we have helped many retailers to plan and prepare for peak trading events, in order to minimise the risk of technical issues and to ensure a quick reaction when the unexpected happens.

Drawing on our experience of working with many retailers of different sizes, sectors, geographies and technology profiles, combined with our expertise in retail and ecommerce technology, we have developed a service line that enables us to review current business plans, systems and operations, identify any potential bottlenecks or weaknesses, and provide a clear action plan for each.

Our overall approach is based on an eight-step process that can cover both retail and ecommerce technology and organisational readiness:

1. Gather key business metrics We capture key metrics on your retail business operations across the year with a focus on peak trading projections
2. Model your retail and ecommerce technology We build an understanding of your critical systems and pipelines within your technology landscape that are impacted on during peak
3. Complete architecture analysis We analyse current utilisation and capacity constraints across the technology model, create a mapping to business metrics and overlay the projected peak volumes
4. Review your performance tests We review current performance tests to understand existing testing approaches and coverage
5. Perform a risk analysis We identify the main areas of risk and expand upon these with an analysis of likelihood and impact
6. Deliver action plan We develop an action plan, identifying mitigations and contingencies against each risk area
7. Review internal organisational readiness We analyse issue management, existing peak readiness plans and internal communications plans to ensure that if problems do occur the team has the tools to deal with them quickly and efficiently
8. Present findings We present our findings with the supporting rationale, providing the opportunity for challenge and further explanation

Please see below for technology consulting clients, or contact Martin Ryan at martin.ryan@javelingroup.com or on +44 (0)20 7961 3200 to discuss your requirements.