Retail Collaboration Business Impact

The retail collaboration practices require the retailers and the participants in the collaboration network incorporate enhanced social networking capabilities and social network technologies to support the demands of the marketplace.  While this technology opens the retail collaboration network to increased flexibility and capabilities to allow participants to connect and interact more fluidly and easily, it also opens the network to all of the troubling aspects of the social networking from unwanted participants as well.  This requires the retailer ot also implement networking monitoring and management practices to protect the innocent participants in the collaboration network from the predatory participants. Predatory participants in the collaboration network will quickly cause this network to lose participants if unchecked for too long.

These monitoring and management tools and techniques are a new cost of doing business and must be taken into account and planned as part of the collaboration network base requirements.  The business impact along with the potential legal consequences will quickly shut down the network causing a great deal of reputation and financial harm to the participants. There are too many unintended consequences involved in the collaboration network for the retailer to go into the relationship lightly.  The retailer and other business participants have a great deal at stake if the network is compromised through a data breach and these participants must take measures to secure these assets while still promoting the collaboration. These business participants are in a somewhat of a difficult position; they must protect their business assets, including customer personal information, from these hacking activities while also providing the open networking framework to support the collaboration demands.  

Personal information is probably the most valuable, and most must be the most protected asset that an company dealing with the public owns and the theft of these assets can dramatically impact the business form both a cost and reputational perspective.  This focus on protection requires a continuous and also perfect approach to the protection of their customer personal information. These measures are already part of the base business requirements for retailers so the importance is not new, however the risk is dramatically increased because of the additional social network activities.  This increased risk must be taken into account for the planning, implementation and ongoing maintenance of the collaboration network and the maintenance must be especially focused and robust in order to meet the challenges of a robust and continuously changing social network.

The business participants in these collaborative networks must enter into this arrangement with their eyes wide open to understand the importance and also the risk of attack from hackers and as a result must increase their focus and support efforts to overcome the risk.  This must be a key focus of all business participants and requires a focused and continuous effort as well to first protect and second maintain the protection. There are no options and the business participants must always maintain vigilance. Luckily the participants have an opportunity to partner and collaborate on the maintenance of security of the collaborative network.