20 percent of the 308 U.S. and U.K. retail tech decision makers surveyed said they’ve had to postpone or cancel the launch of new in-store tech as a result of infrastructure limitations. Technologies such as augmented reality are set to transform the retail space but are currently being restricted by the constraints of their predecessors.
Retailers are looking to new IT as a way of improving efficiency, offering a modern customer experience and enabling new innovation. As Retail Dive reports, Zynstra found most decision makers have “low confidence” that their tech stack can achieve these aims. This is creating pressure across the industry as retailers find themselves unable to implement their in-store tech visions.
The survey found several specific challenges impede the deployment of new applications. Budgetary restrictions account for most of the delays, with 48 percent of respondents finding digital transformation costs higher than expected. Difficulty in finding skilled IT experts is the next biggest problem, with 35 percent of retailers struggling to find the talent needed to maintain in-store IT.
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In addition to these problems, retailers are still yet to embrace distributed models for their core IT infrastructure. This makes it hard to manage and deploy the technologies that are used in their business. Almost half (49 percent) of respondents surveyed said they cannot easily make IT changes across all their branches, with 32 percent treating individual stores as their own IT installations. The lack of flexibility makes the introduction of new tech a significant challenge.
“It is clear that IT decision makers in the retail space are going the extra mile to support customer experience improvement initiatives and respond to seasonal demands, despite facing significant challenges. But best efforts and squeezing the last drops of performance out of existing infrastructure is no longer enough,” said Zynstra CEO Nick East. “With the customer experience, and particularly the in-store customer experience, fast becoming the key competitive differentiator, it is clear that retailers need a more effective way for IT to support improvement initiatives.”
The roadblocks encountered by retailers during digital transformation will be familiar to businesses across most industries. Recent studies have repeatedly found enterprises are struggling to implement their digital strategies, with most being impacted by one or several common stumbling points.
The digital skills shortage, industry competition and restrictive legacy tech are the most regularly cited concerns of transforming businesses, so enterprises should more carefully plan and research new technologies before beginning implementation. Even strategies that look good on paper can fail if there isn’t a coherent structure that defines how they will be developed, deployed and maintained for long-term use.
