The retail technology landscape has changed beyond recognition over the last two decades. Customers now demand a shopping experience that’s frictionless and personalised across every channel — digital, physical and telephone.
The challenge
Most retail organisations today — and the IT solutions that serve them — are struggling to keep pace with the agility and complexity required to respond to market needs.
The explosion of cloud-based software applications provides businesses with many of the tools they need to deliver the required customer experience. However, this presents organisations with a significant challenge: integration.
The plethora of cloud-based applications can only deliver on their promise when they are all seamlessly linked together.
Why generic iPaaS falls short
Every traditional integration platform works the same way:
- Specify the source system
- Specify the target system
- Map the fields
- Schedule to run
Though all integrations are managed within the same platform, the business is nevertheless creating a large number of point-to-point integrations that all need to be maintained individually.
If a business has 10 applications that all need to talk to each other, that could mean up to 45 point-to-point integrations. If a single application needs to be replaced or upgraded, then at least 9 separate integrations need to be rebuilt.
A better way
Creating a form of “plug-and-play” business process architecture through the integration of component services — all of which communicate frictionlessly through modern API and microservice technologies — must be at the heart of any modern retail IT strategy.
This is exactly what Frog Stack was built to deliver. Our hub-based architecture means each application connects once, and our Master Data Management layer ensures data consistency across all your systems.
The result? Total integration flexibility, a single trusted version of the truth, and the agility to swap out any system without rebuilding your entire integration landscape.
Want to discuss your integration challenges? Get in touch.