Broken communication leads to lost profit. You can find any number of examples of this across industries. 

Retail is no exception.

I’ll give you an example from my own experience.

When I worked as a merchant, I dropped into one of our flagship stores to check on the first delivery of the Fall season. The first drop of Fall is the most critical for retailers as it sets the momentum for the back half of the year, where 60% of year’s revenue is captured.

Imagine my surprise when I discover that certain key products are missing. I go to the staff in the store and they can’t find it. I text our logistics team, send an email to the planning team and use the internal messaging system to ask other buyers in Europe if they have fully received their first Fall delivery.

It took days to figure out why the product was missing – turns out, the product was stuck in a distribution center.

That time spent with product missing from the sales floor means a shortened selling window to drive full-price sales. It also means a temporary disconnect between the corporate merchandising strategy and in-store execution.

The trouble is that these situations occur frequently and broken communication loops serve to hinder decision making and disrupt the execution of go to market strategies. And I could give you a variety of examples in different areas of retail where broken loops directly impact profit.

Naturally, you are likely asking the question, what if there was a better way? What if the communication process was simpler, more robust and enabled key users to find information in (almost) real-time?

Instead of products missing from the shop floor for days, how about reducing that to hours at worst?

This is where a streamlined communications platform is immensely beneficial. As it stands with many retailers, telephony still sits in a silo: a wall phone in the back room, a different app for chat, another for meetings, and a patchwork of devices on the store floor. Every extra tool adds cost, friction, and training time—especially for high-turnover frontline roles.

A streamlined platform eliminates the “broken telephone” and miscommunication. This is also where pertinent information is standardized and available in a single format for all key stakeholders to access. As you would expect, such a platform uses cloud-storage to ensure that decentralized teams can get this information on demand, regardless of their physical location. 

As a bonus, AI can be used to aggregate and consolidate findings across every team and communication tool. It can also be used to deduce patterns and help teams become more proactive in solving problems rather than being reactive. 

Put all of this together and resources previously allocated to upgrading clunky technology are directed towards higher value priorities.

Better still, the benefits go beyond just maximizing the full-price selling opportunity on the shop floor.

Consider the following:

• Customer insight, in real time. What are shoppers asking about across stores this week? Which products are hitting the mark and which ones need to be cut? AI can summarize sentiment and themes so merchants and planners act to prevent returns – this has massive benefits related to cost savings. 
• Store feedback that scales. Instead of collecting anecdotal notes from field visits, AI can analyze thousands of frontline interactions to flag product quality concerns, packaging confusion, or fit issues. This information can then be disseminated back to all store staff so that they are better equipped to help the customer. 
• Faster, smarter preparation. Sales and vendor calls that once took hours of pre-read now start with an AI brief that includes history, commitments, open risks, and suggested next steps. In practice, teams are cutting prep time by 80–90% and redirecting that energy to relationship building.

Ironically, this investment in technology serves to enhance the human-to-human relationship. In fact, a communications platform can only be successful when it is developed in parallel with the corresponding human touch. Whether it is between sales teams and vendors, front line staff and customers or in between cross functional teams – all of them benefit from structured and seamless communication. Comms can bring people together across the business by eliminating barriers and breaking down silos. In turn, employees are better equipped to deliver an improved customer experience.

Clearly, this is not just an  IT upgrade, it’s a business model upgrade. 

When done right, it drives revenue, efficiency, and a better experience for both employees and customers.

And you can bet every retailer and brand wants in on that.