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Managing Business-Critical Information in the Retail Organization

Today, retailers are making ever-greater use of data to drive future improvements in sales and service. Growth in demand for this kind of business intelligence, as well the steady increase in data volumes among retail organizations, is causing many companies re-evaluate their outdated tape-based backup strategy.

As a retailer, your company is heavily dependent on your ability to manage information quickly and reliably. Protecting critical information for retail operations is always difficult, and for chains with numerous outlets it is even harder. Too often, store managers depend on small local providers for data backup and recovery services, resulting in a lack of consistency, cost control and store-level visibility for administrators.

If critical transaction-level information is not intact and accurate it can lead to shortages and incorrect product mixes- meaning fewer transactions and dissatisfied customers, an unacceptable situation for any retailer.

Retail stores also keep sensitive consumer information like credit cards, inventory data and employee records on local machines, making this information susceptible to disclosure, theft, or loss. Without uniform policies and practices for managing information backup, many retailers are not in a position to recover quickly from a data loss event.

For retail organizations, data has to be secure, and it needs to be done in a process that doesn’t hamper day-to-day operations. Tape backup takes time, human resources, is costly and susceptible to errors, mishandling and damage.

In the face of continuous change and constant pressure on time and costs, retailers need a better, more reliable and more secure solution for backup and recovery. With many retail organizations relying on hundreds of gigabytes of business-critical data, complete reliability and advanced system recovery features are essential.

A Better Solution for Retail Data Backup & Recovery

Unlike tape-based backup which requires human resources, and traditional backup software which requires an “agent” installed on each protected machine, CRC DataProtection’s agentless architecture allows one-touch backup and restore of network data from a single administration point.

In addition, Enterprise Data Backup & Recovery is WAN-optimized with block-level processing of data, so that backups only transfer new information.

CRC’s online backup transfers data from all network machines to a fully disaster-hardened, redundant data storage facility:

• POS
• Stock Replenishment
• Application Servers
• Databases
• Desktops
• Laptops
• Mail Servers

CRC DataProtection provides remote backup and recovery solutions for retailers to better manage and secure their critical data across numerous outlets, from store-level to administration. CRC DataProtection has the resources, expertise and experience to provide:

Continuous Data Protection – You can improve Recovery Point Objectives to make recent backups and preserve continuity of your retail operations

Database Hot Backup – Protect your systems without taking them offline and negatively impacting your business

Data Encryption – CRC’s online backup utilizes AES encryption to ensure that data cannot be intercepted in flight or at rest

Backup Lifecycle Management – Inactive or archive data can be moved to more economical storage, to reduce backup costs

Message-Level Restore – CRC DataProtection allows you restore control as specific as a single email message

Bare Metal Restore – Following a server disaster, you can maintain retail business continuity with complete restoration of your most recent system configuration & data

Key Benefits for Retailers:

• Faster backup and restore for data
• Improved confidence in the reliability of data storage
• Ability to schedule and automate backup processes
• Automated “agentless” process that frees up human resources
• Dramatic improvement in backup and recovery times

These and many additional benefits allow CRC to deliver enterprise-class, scalable and redundant protection of critical data. If your retail organization is currently relying on an outdated tape backup system, your disaster recovery and business continuity is at risk to be compromised.

If you are a retail store director or IT administrator looking for greater efficiency, increased reliability and greater economy in your data backup and recovery solution, contact us today. Evaluate our service, and we’ll show you just how easy it is to guarantee that your most valuable business asset - information - is always available, no matter what.