Now that retail is increasingly reliant on the digital realm, there has been a growing focus on DevOps and the potential it offers. It is an evolving philosophy and framework that encourages faster, better application development with the faster release of new or revised software features or products to customers. It encourages smoother, continuous communication, collaboration, integration, visibility, and transparency between application development teams (Dev) and their IT operations team (Ops) counterparts.
Simply put, the opportunities are endless, thanks to some of DevOps’ benefits we have listed below.
Improved customer experiences: The DevOps approach involves the execution of a whole lot of tests and that too across various device testing and different operating systems. The point is to ensure check out every possible factor that can have a bearing on the app’s performance. Furthermore, test automation also helps the company better manage humongous test volumes, which, in turn, also helps accelerate performance. Long story short, such a development approach helps ensure the delivery of top-notch customer experiences.Informed decisions: DevOps systems, especially automation testing processes, fortified with artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other such modern technologies, can offer companies critical insights into their business, including factors such as ideal timing for product launches. Of course, such technologies also help reduce the efforts involved in the maintenance of such solutions.Identify issues early on: DevOps puts immense focus on automation testing, which allows the team to find and fix any issues and problems quite early on in the development lifecycle.Now, let us also take a look at some of the key factors one must keep in mind with DevOps in retail:
Customers must remain central to the product: It is a given that there will always be some sort of a gap between what developers believe is the best path forward and what the customers may want. Now, just because the differences are expected does not mean they should be allowed to fester. So, make sure that the system you build is primed to deliver precisely what your target audience expects and wants. To do that, one must not only study what the competition is doing but focus on the target customer base’s behavior, expectations, etc. where your current offering stands in comparison to these expectations.Teams must remain in sync: When the ultimate objective is enabling the business’ growth, it is imperative that all teams involved are on the same page and there must also be a seamless collaboration amongst them. What this means is that one must see to it that all teams have access to appropriate and requisite data from across all requisite systems to successfully perform their duties and work on the common goal of the business’ growth. Such sync, then, must be ensured right from the scratch, i.e. when the planning for an online retail offering starts.There is little doubt that DevOps has now firmly established itself as a critical part of the development process. For starters, this development approach not only provides a substantially better quality of code but also seeks to help bring about considerable reductions in IT-related costs while also ensuring an accelerated development process as well as a continual increase in releases.
Speaking specifically in the context of the retail business, DevOps can empower retail companies and help them take their businesses to the next level and better fulfill the evolving demands and expectations of modern-day customers. Now, you need to find trusted DevOps providers and pick one that best suits your business requirements.
About the Author
Hi, I am Dorothy and I write technology related articles