How to Fund Your CX Strategy by Reallocating IT Spend

In today’s news media, it seems you can’t escape the story of a struggling retail or restaurant organization that is closing locations or trying to keep above water with shrinking profits. With all this negative propagation, it’s easy to see why you might think the days of the brick-and-mortar are on their way to extinction. A recent study by RIS and IHL tells a vastly different story. Many of these organizations have increased expansion investments by 4 to 7%, adding new locations and remodeling existing stores. And depending on their strategic initiatives, some even project up to 19% more revenue.

Driving this growth is investment in technology infrastructure that supports customer experience (CX). And businesses that project the most significant growth just happen to be investing more than two times the average in technology infrastructure.

So what does a business with no budget to increase investments in the latest and greatest IT do? Reallocate IT spend. The same RIS/IHL study also highlighted that up to 80% of total IT expenditures consist of maintenance and upgrades of legacy systems, and that many companies simply don’t have the capacity to support e-commerce with in-house resources. Where to scale back? Out of all the things to cut in your IT budget, WAN is the most expensive part of the network, a Gartner poll has revealed. The WAN is being stretched beyond its capabilities with cloud applications, and both security and the user experience are compromised as a result.

Total cost of ownership, including capital expense, recurring costs, and personnel can be significantly decreased with SD-WAN. Since SD-WAN is software based, it provides a bridge to deploy future applications easily, quickly and inexpensively. And because SD-WAN is virtualized, it can ride on top of your existing network – making the most of your current IT investment. Another benefit? Security and performance are optimized, easing the burden of PCI compliance and allowing for a focus on enhanced customer experience with a resourceful IT budget.

Who knew you could redirect a good portion of your IT budget to maximizing your customer experience strategy? For more information contact us at sales@paralleltech.com.