The challenging part retailers face is that even if they’re large enough to have a dedicated internal IT department, the focus remains on tying business operations to the IT function.
Retail and technology have become almost parallel entities in today’s business domain. Technology and data have always been important, even before the internet fully emerged. Retailers were keen on running their stores more efficiently and leveraging data to better understand their customers.
However, the internet morphed the grocery shopping experience into mobile shopping via tablets and smartphones, while retailers leveraged technology such as SAP to run highly complex operations that joined physical and online storefront processes such as inventory controls, order fulfillment, sales, pricing, customer service and returns.