For years, retailers treated physical stores and ecommerce platforms as separate channels. Their customers have never experienced their brands that way. A shopper discovers a product online, checks whether it’s available and places an order for collection or delivery. Behind that experience, a physical store serves walk-in customers while fulfilling digital orders and providing inventory information to people who are nowhere near the building. The physical store has become part of a retailer’s fulfilment network, customer experience and information environment. That changes the role it plays in the wider business.

The store has another job

This shift is already visible in South African retail. Shoprite Holdings’ 2025 Integrated Report describes the use of AI in Sixty60 capacity management and delivery routing, machine learning in store layouts and product placement, and a computer vision system designed to monitor and reduce queue waiting times.

Shoprite also reports using customer insights to inform pricing and promotions, improve on-shelf availability and reduce waste. Store capacity affects digital fulfilment. Inventory accuracy affects what an online customer is promised. What happens on the shop floor feeds decisions elsewhere in the retail operation.

Availability is now a promise

An inaccurate stock position once mainly created a problem for the shopper standing in the aisle. The same error now affects a customer kilometres away who has placed an order via an app or who expects an item to be ready for collection. This makes store visibility part of the customer promise. The wider business needs a dependable view of what’s available because other processes are making commitments against that information. The store is, therefore, no longer the endpoint of the supply chain. It participates in fulfilment, digital commerce and customer service at the same time.

The most valuable technology sits behind the experience

Much of the conversation about the store of the future has focused on what shoppers will see — digital displays, new payment experiences and other visible innovations — yet some of the most important changes sit behind the customer experience.

For example, a store employee working with dependable stock information spends less time searching for answers. A fulfilment process working from an accurate inventory position has a better chance of keeping a promise made online. The customer doesn’t need to know which platform or process made that possible. They just want a positive result.

The store as part of a wider retail system

For BCX, the connected store sits inside a broader intelligent retail environment. Connectivity, cloud, data, AI, IoT, cybersecurity and enterprise applications support the secure movement of information between a store and the rest of the business. The question for business leaders is whether the store participates fully in the retailer’s wider operating model. A connected store contributes information, supports fulfilment and helps the retailer keep promises made across its channels. Its future will be defined by how well the store works with everything happening beyond its walls.

Our most important customer, is yours

Source: Shoprite Holdings, Integrated Report 2025.