​Why Grocery Retail Is Entering A New Era Of Execution

SVP Portfolio Management at Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions, Yevgeni drives innovation and delivers cutting-edge retail technologies.

getty

We are seeing a broad shift in grocery retail. As operational complexity increases, technology decisions now focus on building a foundation for adaptability and effective execution. For the last three decades, grocery technology’s mission was clear: help retailers process transactions faster.

Retailers responded with significant investments in technologies designed to remove friction from the shopping journey. From modernizing commerce platforms to expanding customer choice and convenience, these innovations transformed how consumers discover, purchase and receive products. The result was a faster, more seamless experience that met rising customer expectations and redefined what convenience means in retail. But something interesting happened along the way. The transaction stopped being the most demanding part of the retail experience. Today, most retailers can process transactions through self-checkout, online, mobile applications and across fulfillment channels. What retailers are struggling with now is something very different: execution.

Execution bridges intent and outcome. While grocery technology has long been measured by transaction efficiency, the coming decade will focus on how well it enables execution.

The Store No Longer Just A Store

What customers experience as one brand is supported by a complex network of systems and operational processes working behind the scenes. Modern grocery retailers often operate multiple businesses simultaneously. Grocery, prepared foods, pharmacy, fuel, convenience, e-commerce, curbside pickup and home delivery now exist within a single customer journey.

As stores grow more connected and complex, supporting individual functions is insufficient. The challenge is to operate as a unified business. Retailers now seek a common operational foundation that connects activities across the enterprise. The role of technology is expanding from supporting transactions to helping the business operate, coordinate and adapt.

Adaptability Replacing Modernization

For years, retailers approached technology through separate modernization projects. Replace the POS. Upgrade e-commerce. Implement a new loyalty platform. Add self-checkout. Integrate another application. While these initiatives often delivered value, they also created a new challenge. Many retailers ended up with a collection of modern systems that were still difficult to change.

Today’s competitive advantage is increasingly tied to adaptability. Retailers need to quickly respond to shifting customer behavior, labor dynamics, priorities and new opportunities. Waiting months for large-scale projects is becoming harder to justify, given that market conditions can shift in a matter of weeks. Technology leaders now assess platforms for how well they meet current requirements and how easily they support future evolution.

Operational Visibility Becoming A Competitive Advantage

Grocery retailers have never had a shortage of data. The challenge has been turning that information into action while there is still time to influence an outcome. Leading retailers are working to close that gap between insight and action. The goal is to create visibility across the business and enable faster decision-making at every level of the organization.

Store operations generate information across inventory, labor, fulfillment, customer traffic, promotions, pricing, checkout activity and loss prevention. Yet in many organizations, these insights remain fragmented across multiple systems and teams. As a result, opportunities are often realized too late—a shrink issue is noticed weeks later, bottlenecks emerge only after performance drops and customer issues are addressed only after complaints mount.

Technology is beginning to move beyond reporting what happened and toward helping organizations determine what should happen next. In some cases, systems can already identify priorities, recommend actions and help teams execute more consistently.

Self-Enablement The Next Strategic Advantage

One major shift in retail technology is the desire for self-enablement. Retailers want more control over how quickly they configure processes, integrate systems, launch experiences and adapt operations. They seek to move faster without lengthy development cycles or large implementation projects. Increasingly, technology platforms are evaluated on how easily they can be extended into the future.

The strongest platforms are becoming foundations for continuous evolution. They allow retailers to adapt workflows, connect new capabilities and respond to changing business needs without repeatedly replacing core systems.

The Path Forward

Retailers increasingly prioritize adaptability, operational visibility, unified operations and self-enablement in evaluating new store technology. Gaining an advantage depends less on buying the most technology and more on building adaptability.

In an industry where customer expectations, labor dynamics and competitive pressures change constantly, execution is no longer just an operational challenge. It has become a strategic advantage.

Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?