New Tech Foundations Are Essential to Achieve Today's Vision of Connected, Intelligent Omni-Channel Retailing

This IDC Market Note summarizes key themes emerging from NRF 2025, including the importance of modernized infrastructure and data strategies to execute AI-fueled data-driven retailing, the use of AI security and loss prevention, and elevating checkout to meet new customer expectations."Seeing new initiatives showcasing the transformative power of AI, GenAI, and agentic AI to reshape how consumers shop and retailers sell underscored the importance of modernized infrastructure foundations and data strategies needed to execute this new vision. Simply put, data-driven AI initiatives won't work without access to real-time, clean, integrated data," says Margot Juros, research director, Retail Platforms and Technologies Strategies, IDC.