Walk into any store and you'll see it: annoyed shoppers, workers checking multiple screens for answers, and inventory numbers that never match reality. These are symptoms. The cause is disconnected data.
McKinsey experts call this a lack of end-to-end excellence—the ability to run your entire business as one smooth operation, not a patchwork of unyoked pieces.
Many common retail problems stem from this issue. This guide shares how to overcome them, with solutions successfully employed by leading retailers.
1. Fragmented systems
Retailers are saddled with tools that don't talk to each other. Often, store staff juggle multiple screens just to answer basic customer questions. Meanwhile, costs spiral as every new integration needs its own maintenance, training, and troubleshooting.
This growing hodgepodge of systems leads to inefficiencies that only snowball over time, creating what Shopify engineering leader Patrick Joyce calls a “fragmentation tax.”
Research from a leading research firm shows that retailers who consolidate their POS and ecommerce systems see marked improvements in operational efficiency and growth. The key to overcoming fragmented systems is to move to a unified platform that streamlines both functions under one roof.
Shopify connects it all—your POS, ecommerce store, and everything in between. Whether you’re a mom-and-pop shop or a sprawling chain, Shopify’s unified platform keeps your systems synced, eliminating middleware and reducing technical resource time by up to 60%.
Here’s how:
- One platform, all channels: Shopify integrates both ecommerce and POS on the same platform, making sure that product, order, and customer information are effortlessly shared across all touchpoints—whether online or in-store.
- Real-time data syncing: Every action, from a purchase to an inventory update, is reflected across your system in real-time.
- Channel-agnostic flexibility: Shopify’s unified commerce solution doesn’t just connect online and offline channels—it’s designed to work seamlessly with every sales touchpoint, whether that’s mobile, social media, or brick-and-mortar.
Take MyFitFoods, for example. The meal prep chain operates nine locations and has plans for rapid expansion, but it was stuck with a fragmented tech stack that included BigCommerce, Brightpearl POS, and 21 other plugins that cost over $10,000 per month to maintain. This setup led to slow transactions, unreliable data, and a clunky customer experience.
After switching to Shopify, MyFitFoods:
- Deployed 28 POS systems across seven stores in just 8 days, cutting transaction times from 180 seconds to 60.
- Saw its online conversion rate jump from under 1% to over 6.5%.
- Eliminated 19 of 21 plugins, slashing technical debt.
“When you have that many customers inside a store, the last thing you want to think about is your POS,” says founder and CEO Mario Mendias. “With Shopify POS, we don't have to think about it. It shows up and works hard. It's like having a great employee.”
2. Inefficient data management
According to PYMNTS Intelligence, over half of retail merchants struggle with limited data sharing across departments, which means they miss out on potential revenue growth—sometimes up to 5%.
When your customer and inventory data live in different places, you're flying blind. Without the right data at the right time, you only see fragments of a customer's journey, which isn't nearly enough for solid, data-driven decisions.
Shopify brings your sales, customer, and order data together on one secure platform, giving you a 360-view of how your business and customers connect—so you can optimize the backend processes and reap the frontend rewards.
Here's how:
- Single customer view: Shopify creates one complete customer profile, logging their purchases, interactions, and loyalty points across all touchpoints. Use this information to personalize their shopping experience—like recommending a matching pair of shoes if they've bought a dress. Check nearby stores or warehouses to fulfill the order if an item's out of stock.
- Automated synchronization: Product information, pricing, and promotions stay consistent across all channels without manual updates.
- Secure data handling: Enterprise-grade security protects customer information while making it accessible to the right team members.
- Supply chain visibility: Real-time integration with suppliers and logistics partners informs everyone about inventory and fulfillment.
Pet food retailer Tomlinson’s has experienced this retail problem first-hand. Its legacy POS system was disconnected from its ecommerce platform, which made it difficult to track inventory and personalize the customer experience.
“We have to be able to track customer profiles and ensure the appropriate profile tags and discounts are associated with each profile for 365 days,” says owner and operator Kate Knecht. “And the Pet Club discount needs to be automatically applied to each transaction. There can’t be any manual extra steps. It needs to be seamless for the customer and for the team.”
Tomlinson’s migrated to Shopify as a solution to this problem. Native discounting features and loyalty app integrations mean the retailer can now apply automatic promotions at checkout—no extra taps required.
As a result, Tomlinson’s experienced a 56% reduction in in-store checkout times and a 46% reduction in the number of taps required at checkout.
3. Operational complexity
The “five S’s” framework, introduced by Pal and Byrom in 2003, highlights the pain points retail managers face when five key areas of a retail business—stock, space, staff, standards, and systems—aren’t in sync.
They’re onto something: managing stock, coordinating space, keeping staff on the same page, maintaining consistent standards, and running all the systems—it’s a Sisyphean task. If any one of these elements slips, everything else tumbles.
Shopify tackles these “S” problems head-on with a unified platform designed to make operations simpler, smarter, and faster.
- Stock: Shopify’s real-time inventory management makes sure stock is always where it needs to be, whether it’s on the shelves or online. You know exactly how much stock you have and where it is at all times.
- Space: Wasting valuable store space on slow-moving products? Shopify’s analytics help optimize space allocation by showing you what’s selling and what isn’t. This lets you adjust quickly—maximizing every square foot of your retail space.
- Staff: Shopify automates repetitive tasks, freeing up your staff to focus on what they do best—delivering great customer experiences.
- Standards: When your systems are disconnected, keeping things consistent across stores is nearly impossible. Shopify guarantees uniformity—whether it’s pricing, inventory, or promotions—across all channels and locations, so your brand’s experience remains flawless everywhere.
- Systems: Shopify brings all your operations—sales, inventory, reporting—under one roof, allowing you to manage everything from a single interface, cutting down on errors and making everything run smoothly.
Before Shopify, Melissa’s small business, Starlight Knitting Society, was tangled up in disconnected systems for their website, POS, and inventory management. With everything operating separately, Melissa and her team were drowning in manual work, like constantly reconciling inventory and tracking loyalty points in spreadsheets.
But when Starlight switched to Shopify, everything clicked. The team moved to a single source of truth that streamlined inventory, automated loyalty programs, and simplified daily operations.
The impact was immediate:
- 2 hours per day saved on inventory management.
- 2–3 hours per day saved on product listing tasks.
- A major reduction in repetitive customer service tasks.
- Same-day POS training for seasonal staff.
“My team now has time to beautify the shop, make samples, and personal shop for folks via email or phone,” Melissa says. “They told me that the time that switching to Shopify freed up for them felt like they were getting a bonus.”
4. Inconsistent customer experiences
Customers expect the red carpet treatment wherever they shop. And yet, 40% of brands acknowledge that their customer experience falls short across these channels. The culprit? Data silos and legacy infrastructure. When your systems live on separate islands, your customers notice—and their brand loyalty suffers.
Add to this, only 24% of businesses say they’re successfully investing in omnichannel personalization. And boom, we have all the markings of poor customer service.
Shopify’s omnichannel tools eliminate data silos, making it easier for you to deliver personalized, consistent experiences across every touchpoint—all without any custom development:
- Endless aisles: Ever had a customer fall in love with a product in-store…but then walk out empty-handed because it’s out of stock? That’s where endless aisles come in. With Shopify, shoppers can order out-of-stock items from the store and have them shipped directly to their door. You still capture the sale, and the customer walks away happy, not heading to your competitor.
- Clienteling tools: Personalization is key to keeping customers engaged. Shopify gives your staff the tools to access customer profiles, offering tailored recommendations no matter where they shop. That way, in-store or online, the experience feels familiar, relevant, and—most importantly—consistent.
Diane von Furstenberg (DVF) used to struggle with scattered customer information and disconnected systems. Sales associates had to toggle between platforms to access purchase history and preferences—slowing them down and hindering the personalized service DVF is known for.
After switching to Shopify POS, DVF gained a unified view of its customers. Personal stylists could now access complete profiles in seconds, offering tailored, efficient service anywhere on the showroom floor.
“Now I can click on the customer’s profile,” explains Joanna Puccio, assistant store manager at the NYC flagship store. “I can see what a client bought and returned, their typical sizing, color preferences, and even notes our staff adds to their profiles. Shopify makes it easy to view customer information.”
5. Low staff productivity
In a small team, every hand matters. But when your staff is bogged down by repetitive tasks and tech glitches, valuable time slips away—and burnout creeps in. In larger operations, this inefficiency multiplies. Staff constantly switch between systems, dealing with technical hiccups and drowning in manual work. As a result, productivity takes a hit, and the focus on customer service slips.
With retail turnover soaring past 60%, it’s clear: your employees are stuck in the weeds, duplicating efforts across channels and losing sight of what really matters—creating great customer experiences.
You need unified workflows that consolidate systems, slash redundancies, and automate time-sucking tasks. With Shopify, brands save the equivalent of 0.4 full-time employees per store, cutting wasted hours and boosting productivity.
Before switching to Shopify, Oak + Fort faced multiple inefficiencies in their daily operations, with staff toggling unnecessarily between systems to manage inventory, process orders, and track customer data. “We were able to cut down a three-step process to one action,” says Jennifer Pearson, the brand’s head of technology and ecommerce.
This change saved approximately:
- 50 hours per week for their headquarters staff.
- 40 hours for the customer experience team.
- 10 hours for IT support.
6. Slow implementation speed
From securing a location to negotiating leases, getting permits, and setting up inventory, launching a new retail store can drag on for months—often six or more. And that’s just the physical side. Adding new features and tech to enhance your store experience is a whole new ballgame. Add on another three months. We’re talking about 10 months—and that is, if everything goes according to plan.
Shopify POS accelerates the process with a 20% faster implementation time than its competitors. Brands can rapidly scale operations without the lengthy setup that typically slows growth.
The proof is in the pudding. Pepper Palace, the world’s largest spice-themed chain, with over 40 stores already, needed to scale quickly without the operational bottlenecks slowing them down. That’s when they switched to Shopify POS.
Here’s how the migration paid off:
- The entire migration to Shopify POS took just 2 months, far quicker than traditional systems.
- Shopify’s easy-to-use admin made it simple to control all sales channels from one place, speeding up workflows and eliminating time-consuming manual processes.
Pepper Palace scaled from 40 to over 100 stores and grew its customer database by 900%, with 127% growth in monthly gross merchandise volume.
“We’re able to open stores quicker, operate them with less overhead, and efficiently acquire customers who continue to support the brand online well after their first visit,” says President and COO Paul Bundonis.
7. Barriers to innovation
Do you know the most expensive six words in business? Forbes says they are: “We’ve always done it this way.” But this common challenge isn’t just an attitude problem: almost all businesses—including many retailers—rely on outdated spreadsheets for their data management.
These legacy systems are anchors—heavy and ancient—actively draining resources that could be spent on innovation. Because when your technology can't keep up, you're stuck maintaining the old instead of building the new.
While other platforms require costly upgrades or custom development for new features, Shopify takes a different approach by investing $1.7B in R&D annually, adding 200+ platform updates yearly. Retailers automatically get the latest commerce innovations without additional cost or effort.
Rainbow Shops, for example, is a fashion retailer competing with the big leagues—Amazon, Walmart, Shein—and thrives despite a small in-house tech team. But for all their success, their tech was holding them back. Their platform, Demandware, once the golden child of ecommerce, had become sluggish and outdated, no longer driving the innovation they needed to stay competitive.
David Cost, its VP of digital and ecommerce, knew they had to replatform—and once his team made a move to Shopify, they had instant freedom to innovate.
With Shopify, Rainbow Shops experienced:
- An 80% drop in platform fees.
- The ability to launch new features in minutes, not months—the speed gave them an edge over their larger competitors.
- A frictionless checkout experience—the best-converting in the world, in fact; as well as Shopify’s accelerated checkout offering Shop Pay that, according to David, rivals Amazon.
“Shopify has 3,000+ engineers that are constantly working to innovate, update, and add new features to the platform, plus a third-party ecosystem of all of the other developers who are building cool new things,” says David. “[We knew that] being able to bring all of those things together would give us a leg up and let us compete with an Amazon or Walmart, where they have thousands of engineers of their own.”
Make every part of your business work better, together
The theme that runs through every retail success story is simple: unity. One source of truth. One platform that handles everything. One seamless experience for your customers and staff.
Whether you're managing a single storefront or expanding across continents, the path forward is clear: unify your operations, simplify your systems, and focus on what really matters—growing your business and delighting your customers.
Common retail problems and solutions FAQ
How can retailers improve supply chain management?
- Use real-time inventory management software
- Strengthen relationships with vendors
- Diversify your supplier base
- Set safety stock levels
- Automate reordering processes
- Partner with a 3PL service
What is the biggest issue facing retail right now?
- Customer privacy concerns surrounding data collection required for personalization
- Inflation and rising costs of raw materials
- Demand for seamless omnichannel experiences
- Barriers to innovation
- Low staff productivity
- Operational complexity
Can Shopify help with international expansion?
Shopify’s multi-currency and multi-language support make it easy for retailers to expand into new markets. With Shopify’s tools, you can manage taxes, currencies, and localized content to ensure a smooth global rollout.
