Retail Futures Playbook
The #1 Cloud ERP, Oracle Netsuite is an AI-powered business management suite, encompassing ERP/Financials, CRM, and e-commerce for more than 42,000 customers. They enable retailers to become more agile and boost profitability by managing all front and back- office operations in a single platform with real-time visibility of customers, orders, items, and inventory. Providing an integrated business system with embedded AI, Oracle Netsuite delivers powerful financial management, supply chain, customer experience, and HR capabilities.
Our challenge was to position Oracle Netsuite as a visionary voice in retail’s future.
In 2012, retail futurist Paco Underhill predicted that stores would change more in twelve years than they had in the previous fifty. From our vantage point in 2025, that change feels like just the beginning.
We created our report as a call to reimagine what retail could become in a world defined by connection, complexity and constant reinvention.
Our report combines extensive desk research across global retail trends with strategic stakeholder interviews, including insights from Oracle NetSuite's Kath Brameld, to map the forces reshaping commerce with a 3-7 year horizon.It identifies three interconnected pillars reshaping retail's future:
Connected Experience - Moving beyond transactions to seamless, ambient commerce
Intelligent Operations - AI-powered systems that predict and adapt in real-time
Purpose-Led Scale - Embedding ethics and sustainability into growth models
Retail is no longer a fixed journey. It is becoming a living, learning system that evolves with every interaction and is more responsive to changing demands, emerging technologies and cultural momentum.
