Savvy retailers are focusing on customer-centric objectives such as protecting customer data and providing a consistent experience across multiple media channels. At the same time, they must contend with:

• Heightened consumer fragmentation
• Increased competition
• Growing labor costs and turnover
• A complex global supply chain

Addressing these challenges requires increasing visibility into the supply chain and improving employee productivity.

However, today's retail business processes are usually isolated in different applications. To support key business objectives, retailers must define architectures that integrate disparate sources of information. Designing a network infrastructure that provides reusable network-based services allows for greater standardization, centralization, and control over your application environment.

Using the Cisco Service-Oriented Network Architecture (SONA) framework as a foundation, you can deploy networked systems for:

• Better customer communication
• Cost-effective employee training
• Increased security and surveillance
• Improved workforce optimization
• More accurate inventory management