Retail technology leaders are heading into this year’s peak season with two pressures pulling in opposite directions. On the one hand, roughly 80% of retail executives say they’re planning major commerce platform modernization initiatives because legacy systems can’t support the real-time personalization, unified loyalty, and seamless cross-channel payments that customers now expect. On the other hand, about 80% of retailers report being attacked in the past year, and more than half say holiday shopping itself increases their cyber risk. Modernize too slowly, and you fall behind on experience; modernize carelessly and you expand your attack surface right when it matters most.
Here’s where the biggest retail IT shifts stand right now, and how ClearBridge has worked alongside retailers as they navigate them.
Commerce platform modernization is the year’s biggest line item
Legacy commerce platforms are the bottleneck behind almost every other retail IT initiative; you can’t deliver real-time personalization, integrated loyalty, or consistent checkout across channels on top of a storefront that wasn’t built for it. That’s why platform modernization is topping executive priority lists, and it’s also where ClearBridge has done some of its most detailed retail work.
On one recent engagement, a B2C retailer brought in ClearBridge to enhance and scale its e-commerce experience while supporting increasingly complex backend integrations. ClearBridge deployed a Salesforce Commerce Cloud developer who designed and built a scalable storefront on Storefront Reference Architecture (SFRA), connected it to order management, product information, CRM, and payment systems, and layered in PWA Kit to support headless commerce for faster, more flexible experiences across devices. Automated testing was built in throughout, rather than bolted on at the end. The result was a more flexible, better-integrated commerce platform positioned to support our client’s evolving business requirements, not a one-time rebuild, but a foundation that can continue to absorb new channels and integrations as the business changes.
Omnichannel is shifting from “connected” to “predictive”
For years, omnichannel retail meant ensuring that inventory, pricing, and promotions were consistent across the web, app, and store. In 2026, the bar has moved: retailers are using real-time data and AI to anticipate what a customer needs next and proactively orchestrate the experience, rather than just keeping channels in sync after the fact. That requires order management, warehouse management, POS, and CRM systems that actually talk to each other in real time, which is a heavier lift than it sounds, especially for retailers running a patchwork of platforms accumulated over a decade of acquisitions and point solutions.
This is the kind of systems work that sits at the center of ClearBridge’s retail practice: e-commerce platform architecture, order and warehouse management integrations, POS rollouts, and the CRM, loyalty, and business intelligence layers that turn all of it into a coherent customer experience rather than a set of disconnected systems.
AI is moving into merchandising and loyalty, if the data underneath is ready
The AI conversation in retail has matured past chatbots. Retailers are now using AI for precision merchandising, dynamically adjusting assortment, pricing, and placement based on local demand, and for reimagining loyalty programs around unified customer data instead of simple points systems. Store associates are getting real-time recommendations tools, and supply chain teams are using predictive analytics and computer vision to move from reactive firefighting to proactive planning.
None of that works without clean, integrated, well-governed data underneath it; the same foundational problem is showing up across every industry right now. Roughly three-quarters of organizations report their data isn’t actually AI-ready: too siloed, inconsistently labeled, or trapped in legacy systems for a model to use reliably. For retailers, that data usually lives split across the commerce platform, the POS estate, the loyalty system, and the supply chain stack, which is exactly why platform modernization and AI ambitions must be planned together rather than as separate initiatives.
Cybersecurity pressure peaks right when the stakes are highest
The threat data for 2026 is not subtle: about 44% of breaches now involve ransomware; credential-stuffing attempts against retail logins and loyalty accounts run into the billions per month; and nearly a third of breaches trace back to a third party or supply chain vendor. Web skimming attacks continue to target checkout pages directly, which makes headless and PWA-based storefronts appealing from a UX standpoint but no less in need of rigorous security review during implementation. For retailers, the exposure compounds every time a new channel, integration, or vendor is added to support omnichannel growth, which is precisely when modernization projects tend to accelerate.
The common thread
Modernization, omnichannel orchestration, AI-driven personalization, and security all come back to the same foundation: a commerce platform and surrounding systems that are actually integrated, not just connected. Retailers treating platform modernization as a security and data project, not just a UX refresh, are best positioned to use AI and omnichannel investments productively, rather than just adding more surface area to defend.
ClearBridge has spent years helping retailers and brands architect and scale exactly this kind of connected commerce environment, from Salesforce Commerce Cloud storefronts to the order management, POS, and loyalty systems around them. If your platform roadmap is due for a hard look before peak season, it’s worth a conversation.
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