The way consumers order and procure goods and services has significantly changed. Consumers have become accustomed to the convenience of online shopping, and aren’t expected to revert to previous shopping habits. According to Morgan Stanley, U.S. e-commerce is estimated to grow to 27% of retail sales by 2026.

Many retailers continue to rapidly accelerate their shift to digital commerce to adjust to these evolving customer preferences. Digital commerce not only enables retailers to thrive, it creates efficiencies, improves customer experience, and meets the ever-changing demands on the supply chain. The ongoing growth of digital commerce requires retailers to be more digitally agile—transforming the customer experience by blending physical and online retail.

To do this, retailers need to embrace technology that will offer their customers online/mobile ordering options, the ability to check inventory availability in real-time, apps for line busting, and contactless payment through digital wallets or QR codes.

Underlying all this is the need to enable in-store digital experiences and deploy an agile and reliable infrastructure to make it all possible. Specifically, retailers should take advantage of the value of robust in-store WiFi for shopper engagement and data analytics, as well as software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) to enable the secure, effective, and efficient flow of data for real-time analysis and actions.