Now standardised on Google Apps, Levy said his stores have improved retail execution by 30 per cent, thanks to better information flow and workflow automation.

“We have fine control over what people can do and we’ve been using Google Apps for two years and have had no downtime at all,” he said.

The retailer has also made use of third party applications such as via the Google Apps Marketplace to help control transactions and monitor performance.

“We built it in two days,” Levy said. “It costs us $200 a month for all our stores to use and we have full visibility – we are able to make third parties accountable for doing things for us.”

Levy admits that starting from scratch in terms of the IT environment has made it easier, but he warns if businesses are not looking at Cloud technologies, they are going to be left behind.