Retail’s Plumbing Problem
Elliott Winskill
Director of Technology and Solutions, PMC
Why smooth retail transformation depends on the pipes no one see
Talk to any retail IT leader right now and the story is familiar: fewer resources, tighter budgets and higher expectations. At the same time, they’re being asked to deliver sweeping transformation – digital acceleration, omnichannel upgrades and AI implementation. All while ‘keeping the lights on’.
The pressure is immense. And it’s exposing the cracks in places we don’t always like to look.
Behind every slick UX or seamless checkout, there’s a complex web of systems that need to talk to each other – and too often, they don’t. And when your plumbing doesn’t work? No matter how beautiful the bathroom is, you’re in trouble.
The problem lurking below the surface
Retail is a sector with no shortage of ambition. But beneath the bold roadmaps and glossy vision decks, the reality is that many businesses are still struggling with tangled, outdated integrations – the kind that make even simple changes painfully slow.
It’s not just anecdotal. In 2023, 61% of retailers said legacy infrastructure was the biggest obstacle to innovation, according to Retail Systems Research.
We often say retail needs to be agile. But agility isn’t just about mindset. It’s about infrastructure.
And right now, that infrastructure is buckling.
We’ve seen retailers stuck with custom logic no one understands, integrations no one dares to touch and platforms that were never built to support the pace of change now required. In too many cases, “transformation” ends up being a coat of paint over legacy foundations.
The impact of poor integration is widespread
Integration used to be seen as a pure IT function. It lived in the back end, unnoticed until something broke. But that model doesn’t hold up anymore.
Because now, integration impacts everything:
- How quickly a new payment provider can be onboarded.
- Whether real-time inventory updates can support omnichannel.
- If data moves fast enough to feed personalisation and analytics.
- How quickly you can react to a disruption – or an opportunity.
If your systems can’t talk to each other cleanly, your entire operation slows down. And in 2025, speed is survival.
The shift from monolithic to modular
The market is moving away from monolithic “rebuild everything” projects, turning toward incremental, modular transformation. It’s become necessary.
Retailers are starting to decouple systems where they can. To break logic out of platforms that were never designed to scale. To create architectures that don’t fall over every time a new channel is introduced or a vendor is swapped.
It’s not glamorous work. There are no big reveals or flashy customer experiences. But it’s the work that enables all of that.
This is the quiet infrastructure shift that is starting to happen behind the scenes.
The underlying purpose
The point isn’t to go microservices for the sake of it.
The point is to create architecture that matches the pace and volatility of modern retail.
That’s where the budget is going instead – toward systems that can flex, teams that can iterate and integrations that don’t require heroics every time a change is made.
Success in practice
One of our customers, Ann Summers, faced a similar difficulty.
They needed a more agile, cost-effective integration solution to meet a critical business deadline.
In just 4 months, PMC implemented the Graphene Platform – integrating over 150 services, cutting costs by 50% and providing a scalable fully managed platform for future growth.
Why does this matter?
it’s all about turning IT from a bottleneck into an enabler.
This is the direction the market is heading – modular, microservice-driven architectures that reflect the speed and complexity of retail.
The future and beyond
Retail’s plumbing problem isn’t going away. But acknowledging it is the first step.
For too long, we’ve focused all our energy on customer-facing tech, and rightly so. But the systems underneath? They need just as much attention.
Because you can’t deliver modern, agile retail experiences on legacy infrastructure.
And you can’t outrun fragility, no matter how sleek the interface.
Ready to untangle your retail infrastructure?
Our Graphene Platform was recently named Composable Commerce System Integrator of the Year by the Retail Tech Breakthrough Awards, underscoring the speed, agility and impact it brings to modern retail.
Talk to our integration experts today and discover how PMC can help you build the foundations for true retail agility.
