With the certainty of the pandemic continuing through the winter months, businesses are going to experience major operational challenges. These will be particularly acute around maintaining social distancing, tracking contacts and upholding changing regulations. Despite this, organisations can utilise digital technology such as IoT and analytics to help them optimise their operations while putting the safety of their employees and customers first.

At the start of the year, the physical store was regaining its competitive edge in the battle against online retail, in many cases as a result of the adoption of new technologies that supported customer experience. The brick & mortar Retail environment would have been in the midst of a digital transformation of course, had the coronavirus pandemic not disrupted the world 2 months ago. With massive worldwide lockdowns that spared essentials stores such as supermarkets and groceries, any retail vertical was stopped in its tracks and the image of our own daily lives as in-store customers was shifted.