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93% of organizations’ digital commerce operations are impacted by technology limitations. Here’s what’s holding teams back — and your playbook for change.
Is your digital commerce technology holding you back from achieving your business goals? If so, you aren’t alone: 93% of organizations’ digital commerce operations are impacted by technology limitations.
In partnership with research firm Vanson Bourne, we surveyed IT leaders and business decision-makers at 200 manufacturers, retailers, and wholesalers for the 2025 Digital Commerce Landscape Report. The goals of this research were to discover more about organizations’ digital commerce strategy, and the impact technology has on their success. Key findings showed:
Let’s explore these findings in detail, and take a look at each sector’s greatest digital commerce challenges and priorities for 2025 and beyond. In the context of these survey results, we’ll provide a playbook that will help your organization embrace a culture of experimentation and innovation — driving up revenue and delighting valuable customers in the process.
All organizations surveyed indicated their digital commerce strategy is a priority, with 45% indicating it was a top-three strategic priority for the organization. Even so, many still struggle with the limitations of their commerce platforms: 72% of organizations agree their legacy technology is holding them back from being competitive.
As a whole, 93% of organizations’ digital commerce operations are impacted by technology limitations. The business implications of these technological limitations are striking, ranging from struggles to scale when demand strikes, to cybersecurity risk exposure, to lost revenue opportunities.
Overall, legacy technology is impeding organizations’ ability to execute. For organizations that did not list digital commerce strategy as their top priority, 37% have an outdated infrastructure or technology platforms which prevents them prioritizing their digital commerce strategies.
When it comes to modernizing their commerce technology stack, nearly half (48%) of organizations are prioritizing digital commerce replatforming and technology changes. Yet, big-bang transformations may not be the best solution: While 40% have struggled to find a commerce platform that completely meets their needs, another 41% lack the budget to invest in a new platform — even if they could find one.
To contrast with a complete replatform, a gradual transformation approach may be more appealing. When asked what they’d replace or upgrade about their commerce technology first, respondents cite front-end user experience (52%) and third party systems integration (51%) as top priorities. The emphasis on integrations indicates that organizations may be stepping away from traditionally monolithic, platform-based approaches in favor of composable commerce systems — made up of best-of-breed technologies they hand-select.
However, today, 43% face difficulties in integrating their existing commerce platform with third-party technology. Existing platforms seem to be causing IT teams an outsized amount of pain: 35% of IT decision-makers say that rigid/outdated legacy systems require time-consuming custom development work.
More than half (56%) of organizations are not completely satisfied with the repeat customer experience. What’s worse, 32% feel the limitations of their digital commerce technology is creating customer dissatisfaction and eroding trust and loyalty. This comes at a time when customer acquisition costs are mounting and almost half of organizations surveyed said they are struggling to keep customers loyal.
At the same time, organizations are trying to remain agile and creative when it comes to how their loyalty programs are structured. Some organizations are considering loyalty and VIP experiences (think: exclusive product drops) and subscriptions as ways to earn customer loyalty and increase average order value (AOV). Research shows that millennials and Gen Z consumers in particular respond well to exclusivity, which might take the form of early access, private sales, and flash sales.
Many organizations are feeling pressure to adopt AI in their commerce experience to stay competitive — and fast. The fear of missing out (FOMO) is real: 86% believe that without AI integration within their online store experience, they will be left behind.
More than two in five organizations (45%) believe the race to adopt AI and other emerging technologies is impacting their organization’s digital commerce strategy. That is likely why 49% are planning to add or improve the integration of emerging technologies like AI into their digital commerce experience in 2025. When it comes to how they’ll use AI, the top use case (for 50% of respondents) was SEO and creating web content (e.g. product landing pages or product detail pages).
Personalization also featured highly among organizations’ technology challenges and plans for using AI. Personalization has been both a buzzword and an elusive goal for commerce storefronts for years, yet many feel AI will help them finally personalize the customer journey. Wholesalers, in particular, are optimistic about the potential for AI to help them personalize the digital customer journey — with 61% planning to implement it.
Overall, 95% of organizations surveyed agree their organization’s digital commerce strategy requires improvement to support modern ecommerce.
The good news? Making a change to your legacy digital commerce stack doesn’t have to involve a massive replatforming or big bang transformation. Smaller changes can make a big impact on AOV, loyalty, and overall business agility.
Here’s our playbook for where to start, based on the State of Digital Commerce 2025 research.
Why: More than half of organizations (51%) are not completely satisfied with the ease of creating and managing integrations with other systems, tools, and third-party applications. Rigid and inflexible legacy systems cause IT and development teams to invest in time-consuming workarounds and/or custom development hours from systems integrators.
What to look for: Find a solution that gives you a central location to build, deploy, manage, host, and monitor your integrations. Ideally, you should have the flexibility to:
With these capabilities, your IT team will be more empowered to gradually integrate new technology as opposed to completely ripping and replacing your existing commerce platform.
Why: Nearly three-quarters (73%) of teams agree that their organization’s growth is limited by being unable to accurately showcase their product catalog. For example, 52% are not completely satisfied by their ability to add dynamic pricing and promotions. IT teams want it to be easy for merchandisers to remain agile, make changes, and adopt the latest technologies like AI to personalize their storefronts.
What to look for: Legacy monolithic ERP systems treat the commerce catalog as a tightly coupled, rigid and structured way to display information based on internal business processes. This prevents companies from adapting to customer demands or merchandising needs.
A flexible, composable product catalog can go a long way when it comes to providing the personalization and promotions you need to showcase your product effectively to customers. Look for a solution that separates products, price books, and catalogs into distinct microservices.
Your catalog infrastructure should allow your merchandisers to easily execute on:
Why: To support a culture of innovation, 97% of organizations say they need a digital commerce platform that is more flexible and adaptable to technology changes. The top use-case for AI among 50% of survey respondents was SEO and creating web content. Nearly half (49%) plan to use AI for website chatbots or AI agents.
What to look for: API-first commerce technology helps you embrace a culture of experimentation with new technology. Many composable, API-first commerce technologies provide capabilities to plug generative AI (GenAI) workflows and AI agents into your existing storefront. For example, here are a few places you should start:
The bottom line?
Elastic Path commissioned independent market research specialist Vanson Bourne to conduct a research study to understand how organizations in the manufacturing, retail, and wholesale sectors approach their digital commerce strategies. The quantitative study surveyed 200 senior decision makers from the US and the UK in January and February 2025. Respondents were from organizations with a global annual revenue between $25 million and $500 million.
About Vanson Bourne:
Vanson Bourne is an independent specialist in market research for the technology sector. Their reputation for robust and credible research-based analysis is founded upon rigorous research principles and their ability to seek the opinions of senior decision makers across technical and business functions, in all business sectors and all major markets. For more information, visit www.vansonbourne.com
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