Christmas is the highlight of the UK retail calendar. As the public look to open their purses during the festive period, retailers place much emphasis and energy into maximising their sales at the busiest shopping time of the year. For all the opportunity that Christmas creates, it does bring the challenge of fulfilling swelling customer demand. Although it may seem like a nice problem to have, in reality the scenario of supply outweighing demand could leave retailers with reams of untapped sales revenue and dissatisfied customers.
The heightened demand of Christmas puts pressure on retail businesses to process both online and in-store sales in order to provide a real-time view of stock availability and location. At such a critical time of year, retailers cannot afford to operate with systems that struggle to facilitate the increase in transactions generated by Christmas.
The scalability provisioned by the cloud gives hosted retailers an advantage over competitors as they can still function efficiently under the pressure of the Christmas shopping environment. In times of heightened demand, they simply scale up their storage capacity to capitalise on the additional trade that Christmas brings.