Retail’s Biggest Challenges and How to Stay Ahead
Today’s retailers confront rising customer expectations, escalating operational costs, and persistent supply chain disruptions. To stay competitive, businesses must embrace technology to streamline operations and improve efficiency. Here are three significant challenges retailers face and how technology—powered by AIDC (Automatic Identification and Data Capture)—is unlocking a more unified commerce experience.
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Challenge 1: Managing Complex Operations
Customers expect seamless, personalized, and ethical shopping experiences across all channels. However, providing these experiences while maintaining data security and real-time inventory visibility is a significant challenge.
How Technology Helps: AI and cloud platforms personalize shopping, automate inventory tracking, and secure transactions. AIDC solutions, including Digital Link, barcode scanning, and RFID, enable real-time product tracking, enhancing omnichannel operations and consumer transparency.
Challenge 2: Balancing Costs and ROI
Retailers face mounting pressures due to labor shortages, theft, and high-tech investments. Managing these costs while ensuring profitability is a constant struggle.
How Technology Helps: Automation reduces labor dependency and streamlines operations—from self-checkouts to AI-powered fraud detection that verifies product authenticity. AIDC innovations like item-level tracking, mobile scanners, and smart labels improve inventory accuracy and reduce shrinkage, maximizing ROI.
Challenge 3: Improving Supply Chain Visibility
Disruptions and fragmented systems make it challenging to gain real-time inventory insights, leading to stockouts, overstocks, and inefficiencies.
How Technology Helps: Cloud-based integration provides real-time supply chain tracking, while Digital Link, RFID, and barcode scanning improve inventory accuracy and traceability. AIDC ensures automated and secure supply chain operations, enhancing responsiveness and reducing risks.
Advancing Sustainability in Retail
As sustainability becomes a strategic priority, retailers are rethinking how they manage supply chains, inventory, and customer transparency. From improving traceability and reducing waste to enabling circular returns and disclosing environmental data at the product level, AIDC technologies provide a critical foundation. Automatic identification and data capture solutions empower retailers to operate more responsibly—making sustainability measurable, actionable, and scalable.
Moving Toward a Unified Commerce Future
AIDC technologies are crucial for retailers pursuing unified commerce. By delivering actionable data, AIDC improves inventory management, operational efficiency, and sustainability. In our following discussion, we’ll explore how AIDC can help achieve unified commerce success.