Retail has always been a hotbed of innovation due to its fast pace and competitive nature. Self-checkout, self-scan apps, and Just Walk Out technology reduce friction in the shopping experience. Seamless omnichannel experiences connect physical and digital stores, while personalised offers drive upselling opportunities. Retailers continuously push the boundaries of what is possible, seeking a competitive edge through digital transformation.
These transformations are even more impressive given the constraints they operate within. Innovation must be delivered rapidly to keep up with the industry’s speed. It also needs to be cost-effective, given the typically tight margins in retail.
The reality is that these constraints often come at the expense of quality. This undermines the user experience and, ultimately, prevents digital transformation initiatives from reaching their full potential.
Factors that hinder successful digital transformation in retail
There are several reasons why retailers don’t secure the projected returns on digital transformation projects.
Many retailers still approach these initiatives using the traditional waterfall methodology long associated with large-scale tech projects. However, in today’s fast-paced environment, sequential development simply doesn’t cut it. Businesses now demand frequent updates to their data and continuous improvements to digital workflows, requiring development cycles measured in days rather than months or years. The longer a project takes, the higher the cost and the lower the returns.
Retail quality assurance strategies also suffer in a waterfall approach, which in turn impacts the effectiveness of an initiative.
When time is tight, tasks at the end of the development pipeline are often scaled back. In a waterfall process, this typically means cutting quality assurance efforts, allowing defects to slip into the live environment.
When costs are a concern, teams may hesitate to sacrifice features or functionality. Instead, quality assurance is often reduced to save money.
If a project overruns and launches later than planned, retail’s rapid evolution means the landscape may have already shifted. As a result, the technology may be less relevant or impactful than initially intended. This, in turn, diminishes the motivation to make iterative quality improvements necessary for unlocking its full potential.
The reality of retail technology
Most retail operations rely on a network of hundreds of applications, many of which are built on mainframe-based systems that are 30 to 40 years old. Maintaining these legacy systems is a huge task, compounded by the need to integrate modern innovations with outdated technology — all while enhancing functionality and user experience.
In too many cases, new tools require cumbersome workarounds to accommodate upstream or downstream processes that were overlooked during development. This ultimately hinders digital transformation efforts.
So, these are the challenges, but what are the solutions? Let’s consider how to reset the model and implement the necessary retail quality improvement initiatives to help retailers maximise the potential of digital transformation.
Ensuring quality in retail transformation
Input from the broader business during initial scoping conversations is vital to understanding the problems that need to be solved and the solutions that need to be implemented.
These conversations also reveal the upstream and downstream dependencies that will be affected by any new system. Effective governance in this area can prevent or significantly reduce the challenges of interfacing with multiple, often legacy, systems.
Quality assurance must be a core focus in any delivery approach. By embedding quality from the outset, starting with defining testing requirements alongside initial business requirements, organisations set the foundation for delivering exceptional user experiences that meet consumer demands.
This proactive approach is further reinforced when clear success metrics for retail transformation are established, ensuring that critical processes remain integral and are not compromised by cost-cutting measures.
The business itself also plays a crucial role in ensuring quality. During the development phase, it is essential to engage with business users. This helps ensure applications are developed with a clear plan and provides opportunities to address edge cases. Such conversations give insight into how the application will be used in the real world. This helps QA teams develop test cases that reflect real-life scenarios. They can test that the application works in a way that delivers maximum value, rather than just in the way the team developed it to work.
One reason quality is sidelined when time and budgets are tight is because it’s viewed as time-consuming and manual. Test automation tools offer a solution by helping QA teams to increase coverage, drive quality and enhance outcomes.
Tools are available to help retailers transform both in-store and online experiences across all customer touchpoints and technologies by improving software quality and performance. A model-based approach can verify and validate digital experiences across all devices and browsers.
AI-driven robotics can assist in testing POS terminals and connected physical devices, helping retailers optimise the in-store checkout experience. Retailers can also implement automated testing frameworks that cover both physical and digital applications, ensuring seamless integration across legacy and modern systems.
