Eddie Dryden, Client Executive: Retail, Liquid Intelligent Technologies SA

Liquid Intelligent Technologies recently hosted a retail roundtable for C-suite executives, focusing on creating seamless customer interactions across all retail channels and customer touchpoints. Boyd Chislett and Eddie Dryden from Liquid Intelligent Technologies South Africa discussed digital solutions that drive efficiency and optimisation, as well as productivity, customer engagement, retention, and loyalty.

“With the emergence of the digital revolution, many organisations remain uncertain about the future and how to solve digital requirements,” said Chislett. “They are wary of investing in outdated technologies, but know they must embrace new technologies to leverage market opportunities.”

With Covid-19, loadshedding, and a slow economic recovery, retailers extended the lifespan of their ERP systems. Following a strong last quarter of 2024, the optimism in market recovery is having a beneficial impact on IT. “For the fi rst time, there’s energy to modernise legacy infrastructure and platforms.

Boyd Chislett, Chief Business Officer, Liquid Intelligent Technologies SA

The pendulum is swinging from tolerate legacy to roadmap to replace,” said Dryden. The rise of AI in this digital revolution is prompting organisations to rethink investments in people, processes, infrastructure and platforms.

“Retailers are competing for market share, and organisations are seeking ways to enhance customer loyalty and retention, as well as increase customer spending and customer experience,” said Dryden. “Customer experience involves more than just basic services. Organisations need to provide a focused shopping experience by personalising the brand, product, and touchpoints for each customer, and execute this consistently across all channels.”

Customers require a seamless experience, while retailers need to understand individual customer preferences and offer items that are valuable to them. Enhancing brand exposure is crucial and includes aspects such as product placement, search criteria, and a shopping experience that is cohesive. Additionally, understanding the customer is imperative. Delivering a consistent view of the customer across all channels necessitates leveraging data from multiple sources and systems. Achieving this requires fostering a data-driven culture and data democratisation. “This requires leveraging systems and complementary AI solutions coupled with GPU processing power, which must be part of your investment strategy,” Dryden emphasised.

“How do you integrate multiple systems and databases to get a single view of the customer? Currently, retailers are running traditional bricks-and-mortar POS platforms, separate customer loyalty and CRM systems, and eCommerce platforms. “AI can help unify data, processes and business rules across these disparate platforms,” Dryden said. “AI solutions facilitate omni-channel experiences with hyper-personalisation by making data quickly available and well-structured to be consumed by the system at the customer touchpoint.”

Retailers face significant challenges such as incompatible systems, poor data quality, data silos, and technical debt. These issues affect the investment in modern AI integration. It’s crucial to fi nd the right technology that suits your organisation and market while providing a competitive edge. AI should support a unified customer strategy, link various systems, and address data quality issues within silos.

The hyper-personalisation of data increases cybersecurity risks. AI acts as a cyber threat multiplier. Retailers handle customers’ financial transactions and personal data, making them targets for cyberattacks. Chislett said that threat actors today use advanced tools, requiring organisations to match their cybersecurity capabilities accordingly. Traditional security measures are no longer sufficient.

Marks & Spencer in the UK experienced a significant cyberattack in April 2025, resulting in the theft of customer data. Their online shopping systems were down for over six weeks, with full operations resuming only in July 2025. The attack also disrupted in-store operations, causing some shelves to be empty. The ransomware attack is expected to reduce their annual profits by approximately £300 million, although cyber insurance will cover part of this loss.

Retailers are consistently listing cyberattacks as a top risk in their annual risk register. Successful hacks, like the Marks & Spencer attack, have heightened this risk. The industry’s skills shortage further complicates the situation. Cybersecurity is increasingly viewed as a strategic priority at the board level, with a focus on proactive risk management and dedicated investment budgets. With criminals using AI-driven approaches, security architectures must adopt similar strategies, extending to third-party vendors.

IT investment should focus on customer, supply chain, data, analytics and AI, cybersecurity, and key system modernisation programmes to retire legacy infrastructure and platforms. Retailers need to upgrade legacy footprints, but face challenges like technical debt, poor AI architecture, and data silos. Overhauling everything is daunting, so many make limited investments and pause, avoiding early adoption. The cloud offers a solution by reducing capital investment and enabling a hybrid architecture.

Retailers must transition from multi-channel to omni-channel systems to provide a unified customer experience, personalised recommendations, and increased customer loyalty and market share. As retailers leverage cloud platforms to deliver personalised and seamless shopping experiences across multiple touchpoints, bring services closer to their customers, and gain access to advanced AI tooling and solutions to support data-driven decisions, IT infrastructure and cybersecurity services must keep pace. What to prioritise and where to invest remains a critical choice for retailers.

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