Retail organisations report enjoying 302% ROI as a benefit of investing in observability to enhance digital customer experiences, according to New Relic.
This is from a report based on insights from 148 technologists and decision makers working in the retail industry in 16 key markets.
“Retailers need to deliver great digital experiences to their customers, and they rely on observability to let them see into their digital presence,” said New Relic chief technology strategist Nic Benders.
“The findings in the report clearly show how strategic investments in observability not only drive technological innovation, but also lead to tangible business outcomes, enhancing customer satisfaction and operational visibility,” said Benders.
Retailers are using observability to deliver business value and gain a competitive edge. As they prepare for peak shopping periods like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, observability solutions are helping them address key challenges, from minimising downtime to optimising online customer journeys.
Also, retailers are advancing artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) to build resilience and streamline operations.
These businesses adopted alerts (62%) and network monitoring (59%) at higher rates than other industries, highlighting the demand for rapid, actionable insights in fast-paced retail environments.
Retail firms outpace other sectors in addressing outages, with a median mean-time-to-detection (MTTD) of just 32 minutes. This agility translates to a median annual downtime of 164 hours—41% lower than other industries surveyed.
Further, with billions in consumer spending shifting online, digital experience monitoring (DEM) has become a cornerstone of growth. DEM combines real user monitoring (RUM) — covering browser and mobile monitoring — with synthetic monitoring for proactive testing and improvement.
Over half (52%) of the respondents said they planned to deploy synthetic monitoring within three years, 49% anticipated deploying mobile monitoring and 42% planned to implement browser monitoring to optimise online customer journeys.
Security, governance, risk and compliance was the top technology strategy driving observability adoption, with 46% of retailers indicating this was the case. AI technologies are also a significant catalyst, with 39% of retail respondents identifying AI as a key driver for observability.
This trend reflects the sector’s commitment to leveraging AI for enhanced decision-making, customer insights, and operational efficiencies. In addition to AI, cost management (36%) and customer experience management (34%) are pivotal strategies shaping the observability landscape.
IoT technologies was another key factor, with 32% of retailers saying this was driving their desire to adopt observability. IoT can serve multiple functions in retailers, including inventory tracking and monitoring in-store sales personnel.
This was higher than any sector except media and entertainment, highlighting retail’s proactive stance in harnessing IoT for operational excellence.
In a push to enhance operational efficiency and drive business value, retail and consumer groups have their sights set on achieving full-stack observability. While only 18% of organisations have reached this milestone, the sector is making strategic strides to overcome barriers like an overload of monitoring tools and siloed data, which 35% identified as major hurdles.
One such way they are making this transition is through tool consolidation, with retailers now using 4.4 tools, down from 5.4 in 2023 and 5.9 in 2022, and outperforming the broader industry average of 4.5 tools.
This proactive consolidation effort will support the shift to full-stack observability, with nearly half of the organisations surveyed planning to further streamline their observability investments within the next year to unlock greater operational efficiency and maximize ROI.
As retailers prioritise their observability strategies, the focus is on selecting platforms that offer comprehensive capabilities, affordability, and real-time linkage of business outcomes to telemetry data.
With 41% favoring a single, integrated observability platform, the retail sector is poised to harness powerful, consolidated solutions that promise transformative impacts on business operations and customer experience. This strategic leap marks a significant step forward in driving the sector’s competitive edge in an increasingly digital marketplace.
