Legacy point-of-sale, ERP, and e-commerce systems built for single-channel retail are poorly suited to the demands of an omnichannel operating model — yet the commercial case for change is unambiguous: omnichannel customers spend 50% more than single-channel customers, and more than 50% of European consumers now use both online and in-store options across their shopping journey (McKinsey, 2024). European B2C e-commerce reached €842 billion in 2024, growing 7% year-on-year, but digital intensity among SME retailers remains critically low, with only 6% reaching the EU’s “very high” digital intensity benchmark (European E-commerce Report, 2025). Data fragmentation across channels, markets, and category teams makes it difficult to build the analytics foundation that AI-driven personalization requires — a challenge that cuts directly into basket size and lifetime value. At the same time, the economics of digital channel growth — customer acquisition costs, last-mile logistics, return rates — are forcing retailers to build more sophisticated commercial analytics capabilities simply to understand where they are making money. Retailers that achieve high maturity in unified commerce report 27% lower fulfilment costs and 18% reduced cart abandonment — illustrating how much value remains trapped in fragmented architectures.