Systems Integration

Personalization may be the promise, but the retail experience that customers get from their favorite brands often tells a different story. Despite claims of sophisticated, advanced and "personalized" engagement, many retailers still group customers by generic segments that look similar on paper, such as demographics or purchase history. This approach overlooks the fundamental requirement of…

Retailers have been hearing about “the future of AI” for years, but 2026 is the year it will become operational. Artificial intelligence is quickly moving from being a novelty that consumers test out with curiosity to a tool they turn to for comparisons, deal-finding, and full purchase-path orchestration. In PYMNTS’ 2025 Black Friday survey, 50.3…

Surviving on an average net profit of just 1.6 percent, grocers haven’t typically had much room to experiment with new ways of doing business. At the same time, advanced data analytics and machine learning have rapidly disrupted how retailers operate and raised the bar for consumer expectations, including other low-margin retail sectors. Why has grocery…

The retail industry has never been more fluent in artificial intelligence, and yet, never more limited by it. Most retail leaders can articulate the power of generative AI. They’ve seen chatbots draft marketing copy, image tools design product listings, and data models predict seasonal demand. But ask those same teams how AI could bridge online…

For retailers today, meeting customer expectations takes more than adding artificial intelligence tools. The real impact comes when those tools work together, coordinating data, automations and insights so that operations run smarter and customers feel the impact. That’s what AI orchestration promises, and it’s starting to reshape the retail industry from the inside out. What…

Retail IT is at a crossroads. As the industry becomes more data-driven, retailers must support a growing number of critical applications, including point-of-sale (POS) systems, real-time inventory tracking, artificial intelligence-powered video analytics, omnichannel experiences, and more. And they must do so all while maintaining speed, security and uptime. Traditional IT infrastructure, often built on siloed,…

Retailers today face a perfect storm: economic uncertainty, evolving tariffs, and fast-shifting customer expectations. In response, artificial intelligence investment is accelerating. However, despite the momentum, research shows only 28 percent of executives feel they're using AI effectively, while in retail, one-third of companies have yet to start meaningful AI adoption. This isn't just a technology…

Artificial intelligence has transformed retail by allowing retailers to make the most of predictive analytics and automation. Generative AI, in particular, helps retailers develop personalized content and automated customer engagement. And now, agentic AI is poised to upend e-commerce via automated merchandising, competitive analysis, and even shopping assistants. But is all this technology evolution simply…

In this episode of Total Retail Tech Insights, Editor-in-Chief Joe Keenan interviews Mitesh Lakhani, senior director of solutions consulting at Adverity, the integrated data platform for the modern marketer. Listen in as Lakhani details his career background and Adverity's offerings (1:00), the evolution of marketing data management in retail (2:50), and the biggest data management…

The most successful retail brands in the world — Amazon.com, Target, Walmart, among others — have fully embraced digital transformation to deliver better shopping experiences and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. The fast moving, highly competitive and lucrative retail industry only continues to grow. Adobe recently reported that consumers spent $331.6 billion online from Jan. 1 to…