Technology Performance Failures Give Retailers Sticker Shock

So those are the issues, but how are retailers to stay in front of them? Here are the top two priorities as I see them:

• Application performance must be correlated to the business processes that they support to truly understand impact and prioritize recovery efforts.
• Usability and learning curve of "edge" information technology systems - the customer-facing systems and those that sales associates on the floor rely on to power their interactions with consumers - are paramount to empower your sales associates to focus on the customer experience vs. wrestling with IT systems in plain view of your customers.

But in the big picture, these are the table stakes. Success in these areas enables IT to credibly take their seat at the table and provide strategic advantage to the business: