Executive Summary

Retail Analytics

Retailers operate in a dynamic, fast-paced environment where customer expectations are high and margins are often thin. Retail analytics transforms transactional, behavioral and operational data into strategic insights. In point-of-sale, commerce and operational analytics, retailers use tools to support demand planning, returns and shrinkage analysis, traffic analysis and optimal assortment planning. Marketing analytics enables strategic pricing and promotion decisions, campaign effectiveness measurement, loyalty program optimization and granular customer segmentation. Workforce analytics contributes insights into worker productivity, customer service representative conversion rates and staffing optimization. Increasingly, AI and generative AI tools are embedded in retail analytics platforms to drive automated insights, natural language querying and intelligent recommendations for merchandising, marketing and staffing.

Retail analytics has evolved from early sales reporting and manual inventory management to today’s AI-powered, real-time decision-making platforms.

ISG Research defines Retail Analytics as the application of analytics and AI to improve performance across point-of-sale, e-commerce, marketing and workforce functions in the retail industry. These analytics provide retailers with data-driven insights to support inventory decisions, pricing strategies, marketing campaigns, customer engagement and store operations. Retail analytics platforms enable real-time monitoring and forecasting, empowering organizations to optimize omnichannel experiences, reduce operational inefficiencies and personalize customer interactions through advanced segmentation and loyalty analysis.

Retail analytics has evolved significantly from early sales reporting and manual inventory management to today’s AI-powered, real-time decision-making platforms. In the 1990s, point-of-sale data became a key input to basic dashboards and spreadsheets used for stock replenishment and store performance tracking. With the rise of e-commerce in the 2000s, data sources multiplied, requiring more sophisticated analytics tools to unify and analyze cross-channel performance. Over the past decade, cloud computing and AI technologies have enabled rapid scaling of analytics, leading to advanced capabilities in demand forecasting, dynamic pricing and personalized marketing. Today, retail analytics software incorporates predictive models, customer journey tracking and generative AI to transform raw retail data into actionable insights that drive profitability and customer loyalty.

Retail enterprises need analytics platforms that can consolidate data from a variety of sources, including point-of-sale systems, e-commerce platforms, marketing tools, customer relationship management systems and workforce management software. However, enterprises often struggle with data integration and preparation. Our research shows that 61 percent of retail organizations cite data usability as the most pressing data and AI concern, while 48 percent struggle with data integration. These platforms must provide intuitive, actionable insights that support operational agility and enhance customer experience. For point-of-sale and e-commerce operations, key capabilities include demand planning, product mix and assortment analysis, shrinkage and returns tracking and traffic analysis. Marketing teams require campaign performance dashboards, price elasticity models, loyalty analytics and customer segmentation. Workforce analytics must support productivity tracking, conversion rate optimization and workforce planning. The ability to analyze structured and unstructured data in real time, supported by AI-driven automation and personalization, is critical to keeping pace with shifting consumer behaviors.

Successful retail analytics platforms must provide seamless integration with retail data sources and offer prebuilt models for retail-specific KPIs. AI and machine learning capabilities are essential for tasks such as dynamic pricing, churn prediction and personalized recommendations. Generative AI-powered features such as narrative summaries, conversational interfaces and automated data preparation further enhance accessibility and decision-making. Platforms must support omnichannel retail operations and enable cross-functional collaboration among store operations, marketing, ecommerce and HR teams. Scalability, real-time data processing, intuitive user experience and strong governance frameworks are critical to meeting the demands of today’s retail environment.

Scalability, real-time data processing, intuitive user experience and strong governance frameworks are critical to meeting the demands of the modern retail environment.

This report is a specialized edition of the overall ISG Buyers Guide for Analytics, emphasizing analytics use cases within the retail sector. It evaluates software provider platforms based on their ability to support core retail domains such as point-of-sale and ecommerce operations, marketing and loyalty program optimization and workforce performance management. While sharing general analytics evaluation criteria with ISG’s broader report, this edition places special emphasis on real-time customer insights, omnichannel integration and AI-enhanced merchandising and campaign effectiveness.

Retail organizations assessing analytics providers should focus on platforms that support end-to-end retail data needs, from demand forecasting and returns analysis to loyalty optimization and customer service representative productivity. Providers that combine strong core analytics with AI-powered automation and user-friendly design will offer the greatest value as retailers strive for speed, personalization and efficiency across the value chain.

The 2025 ISG Buyers Guide™ for Retail Analytics evaluates software providers and products across key capabilities, including three analytics areas specific to retail: operational, marketing and workforce and use of AI. It also includes capability requirements used in our overall Analytics Buyers Guide, spanning analytics-specific areas such as discover analytics, integrate analytics, predict analytics, act analytics, collaborate analytics, inform analytics, manage analytics, access data and data models. This research assessed the following providers: Buxton, Databricks, Epicor, Incorta, Infor, Microsoft, Nuqleous, o9 Solutions, Oracle, RetailNext, SAP, SAS, Solvoyo and Verkada.

Buyers Guide Overview

ISG Research has conducted market research for over two decades across vertical industries, business applications, AI and IT. We have designed the ISG Buyers Guide™ to provide a balanced perspective of software providers and products that is rooted in an understanding of business and IT requirements. Utilization of our research methodology and decades of experience enables our Buyers Guide to be an effective method to assess and select software providers and products. The findings of this research provide a comprehensive approach to rating software providers and rank their ability to meet specific product and customer experience requirements.

ISG Research has designed the Buyers Guide to provide a balanced perspective of software providers and products that is rooted in an understanding of business and IT requirements.

The 2025 ISG Buyers Guide™ for Retail Analytics is the distillation of continuous market and product research. It is an assessment of how well software providers’ offerings address enterprises’ requirements for retail analytics software. The Value Index methodology is structured to support a request for information (RFI) for a request for proposal (RFP) process by incorporating all criteria needed to evaluate, select, utilize and maintain relationships with software providers. The ISG Buyers Guide evaluates customer experience and the product experience in its capability and platform.

The structure of the research reflects our understanding that the effective evaluation of software providers and products involves far more than just examining product features, potential revenue or customers generated from a provider’s marketing and sales efforts. It can ensure the best long-term relationship and value achieved from a resource and financial investment We believe it is important to take a comprehensive, research-based approach, since making the wrong choice of retail analytics software can raise the total cost of ownership, lower the return on investment and hamper an enterprise’s ability to reach its potential. In addition, this approach can reduce the project’s development and deployment time and eliminate the risk of relying on opinions or historical biases.

ISG Research believes that an objective review of existing and potential new software providers and products is a critical strategy for the adoption and implementation of retail analytics software. An enterprise’s review should include an analysis of both what is possible and what is relevant. We urge enterprises to do a thorough job of evaluating retail analytics software and offer this Buyers Guide as both the results of our in-depth analysis of these providers and as an evaluation methodology.

Key Takeaways

Retail analytics is evolving as organizations integrate transactional, behavioral and operational data with AI-driven capabilities to improve responsiveness across merchandising, marketing and workforce operations. As data volumes and omnichannel demands grow, retailers require platforms that deliver timely insights while supporting strong integration across POS, ecommerce and supply chain systems. These expectations increase the importance of robust analytical foundations, scalable architectures and user-friendly design. Effective platforms must unify automation, personalization and operational visibility to help retailers make consistent, data-informed decisions.

Software Provider Summary
The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Retail Analytics evaluates 14 software providers that offer products supporting operational, marketing and workforce analytics and the use of AI. The research ranked the top three overall leaders as Oracle, SAP and Microsoft. Providers were classified using weighted performance in Product Experience and Customer Experience for ISG quadrant placement. Infor, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP were rated as Exemplary, with Epicor, RetailNext and Solvoyo rated as Innovative. Databricks, o9 Solutions and SAS were rated as Assurance, and Buxton, Incorta, Nuqleous and Verkada were rated as Merit.

Product Experience Insights
Product Experience, representing 80% of the evaluation, focuses on Capability (65%) and Platform (15%), including adaptability, manageability, reliability and usability. Oracle, SAP and Infor achieved the highest performance as Leaders in this category, supported by the breadth and depth across retail analytics capabilities and strong platform foundations that provide scalable performance, reliable operations and adaptable architectures for diverse retail workflows. Leaders demonstrated enterprise-grade platform capabilities across varied roles and contexts.

Customer Experience Value
Customer Experience, comprising 20% of the evaluation, focuses on validation and TCO/ROI. Oracle, SAP and Databricks were the Leaders in this category, showing strong customer advocacy and clear investment in success outcomes. Providers with lower performance often lacked publicly available customer validation or failed to demonstrate structured ROI measurement and proactive lifecycle engagement.

Strategic Recommendations
Enterprises should treat retail analytics as a strategic investment that unifies data governance, omnichannel visibility, AI-driven automation and workforce optimization. Buyers should prioritize providers that combine strong integration across retail systems, an intuitive user experience and clear value articulation. Platforms that support real-time insights, predictive modeling and accessible self-service capabilities will enable greater operational agility and personalization. Using these criteria, organizations can align provider selection with long-term merchandising, marketing and customer experience goals.

How To Use This Buyers Guide

Evaluating Software Providers: The Process

We recommend using the Buyers Guide to assess and evaluate new or existing software providers for your enterprise. The market research can be used as an evaluation framework to assess existing approaches and software providers or establish a formal request for information from providers on products and customer experience and will shorten the cycle time when creating an RFI. The steps listed below provide a process that can facilitate best possible outcomes in the most efficient manner.

1. Define the business case and goals.
   Define the mission and business case for investment and the expected outcomes from your organizational and technological efforts.

2. Specify the business and IT needs.
   Defining the business and IT requirements helps identify what specific capabilities are required with respect to people, processes, information and technology.

3. Assess the required roles and responsibilities.
   Identify the individuals required for success at every level of the enterprise from executives to frontline workers and determine the needs of each.

4. Outline the project’s critical path.
   What needs to be done, in what order and who will do it? This outline should make clear the prior dependencies at each step of the project plan.

5. Ascertain the technology approach.
   Determine the business and technology approach that most closely aligns to your enterprise’s requirements.

6. Establish software provider evaluation criteria.
   Utilize the product experience: capability and platform with support for adaptability, manageability, reliability and usability, and the customer experience in TCO/ROI and Validation.

7. Evaluate and select the software provider and products properly.
   Apply a weighting the evaluation categories in the evaluation criteria to reflect your enterprise’s priorities to determine the short list of software providers and products.

8. Establish the business initiative team to start the project.
   Identify who will lead the project and the members of the team needed to plan and execute it with timelines, priorities and resources.
   
   

Using the ISG Buyers Guide and process provides enterprises a clear, structured approach to making smarter software and business investment decisions. It ensures alignment between strategy, people, processes and technology while reducing risk, saving time and improving outcomes. The ISG approach promotes data-driven decision-making and collaboration, helping choose the right software providers for maximum value and return on investment.

The Findings

The software providers and products evaluated in the research provide product and customer experiences, but not everything offered is equally valuable to every enterprise or is needed to operate in business processes and use cases. Moreover, the existence of too many capabilities in products may be a negative factor for an enterprise if it introduces unnecessary complexity. Nonetheless, you may decide that a more comprehensive set of capabilities in the product is important, and where they match your enterprise’s requirements.

An effective customer relationship with a software provider is vital to the success of any investment. The overall customer experience and the full lifecycle of engagement play a key role in ensuring satisfaction and long-term success. Providers with dedicated customer leadership, such as chief customer officers, tend to invest more deeply in these relationships and prioritize customer outcomes to TCO and ROI expectations. It is equally important that this commitment to customer success is clearly demonstrated throughout the provider’s website, buying process and customer journey.

Overall Scoring of Software Providers Across Categories

The research finds Oracle atop the list, followed by SAP and Microsoft. Providers that place in the top three of a category earn the designation of Leader. Oracle and SAP have done so in five categories, Databricks and Infor in two and Microsoft in one category.

The overall representation of the research below places the rating of the Product Experience and Customer Experience on the x and y axes, respectively, to provide a visual representation and classification of the software providers. Those providers whose Product Experience have above median weighted performance to the axis in aggregate of the two product categories place farther to the right, while the performance and weighting for the Customer Experience category determines placement on the vertical axis. In short, software providers that place closer to the upper-right on this chart performed better than those closer to the lower-left.

The research categorizes and rates software providers into one of four categories: Assurance, Exemplary, Merit or Innovative. This representation of software providers’ weighted performance in meeting the requirements in product and customer experience.

Exemplary: This rating (upper right) represents those that performed above median in Product and Customer Experience requirements. The providers rated Exemplary are: Infor, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP.

Innovative: This rating (lower right) represents those that performed above median in Product Experience but not in Customer Experience. The providers rated Innovative are: Epicor, RetailNext and Solvoyo.

Assurance: This rating (upper left) represents those that performed above median in Customer Experience but not in Product Experience. The providers rated Assurance are: Databricks, o9 Solutions and SAS.

Merit: This rating (lower left) represents those that did not surpass the median in Customer or Product Experience. The providers rated Merit are: Buxton, Incorta, Nuqleous and Verkada.

We advise enterprises to use this research as a supplement to their own evaluations, recognizing that ratings or rankings do not solely represent the value of a provider nor indicate universal suitability of a set of products.

Product Experience

The process of researching products to address an enterprise’s needs should be comprehensive and evaluate specific capabilities and the underlying platform to the product experience. Our evaluation of the Product Experience examines the lifecycle of onboarding, configuration, operations, usage and maintenance. Too often, software providers are not evaluated for the entirety of the product; instead, they are evaluated on market execution and vision of the future.

The research results in Product Experience are ranked at 80%, or four-fifths, using the underlying weighted performance. Importance was placed on the categories as follows: Capability (65%) and Platform (15%). Oracle, SAP and Infor were designated Product Experience Leaders.

Customer Experience

The importance of a customer relationship with a software provider is essential to the actual success of the products and technology. The evaluation of the Customer Experience and the entire lifecycle an enterprise has with its software provider is critical for ensuring satisfaction in working with that provider. The ISG Buyers Guide examines a software provider’s customer commitment, viability, customer success, sales and onboarding, product roadmap and services with partners and support. The customer experience category also investigates the TCO/ROI and how well a software provider demonstrates the product’s overall value, cost and benefits, including the tools and resources to evaluate these factors.

The research results in Customer Experience are ranked at 20%, or one-fifth of the 100% index, and represent the underlying provider validation and TCO/ROI requirements as they relate to the framework of commitment and value to the software provider-customer relationship.

The software providers that evaluated the highest in the Customer Experience category are Oracle, SAP and Databricks. These category leaders best communicate commitment and dedication to customer needs.

Software providers that did not perform well in this category were unable to provide or make sufficient information readily available to demonstrate success or articulate their commitment to customer experience. The use of a software provider requires continuous investment, so a holistic evaluation must include examination of how they support their customer experience.

Appendix: Software Provider Inclusion

For inclusion in the 2025 ISG Buyers Guide™ for Retail Analytics, a software provider must be in good standing financially and ethically, have more than 50 customers, at least $10 million in annual or projected revenue verified using independent sources, and sell products and provide support on at least two continents. The principal source of the relevant business unit’s revenue must be software-related and there must have been at least one major software release in the last 12 months. The product must be actively marketed as a retail analytics product and capable of accessing data from a variety of sources, modeling the data for analysis, performing point-of-sale analytics, marketing analytics and/or workforce analytics, and communicating the results to various stakeholders.

The research is designed to be independent of the specifics of software provider packaging and pricing. To represent the real-world environment in which businesses operate, we include providers that offer suites or packages of products that may include relevant individual modules or applications. If a software provider is actively marketing, selling and developing a product for the general market and it is reflected on the provider’s website that the product is within the scope of the research, that provider is automatically evaluated for inclusion.

All software providers that offer relevant retail analytics products and meet the inclusion requirements were invited to participate in the evaluation process at no cost to them.

Software providers that meet our inclusion criteria but did not completely participate in our Buyers Guide were assessed solely on publicly available information. As this could have a significant impact on classification and ratings, we recommend additional scrutiny when evaluating those providers.

Products Evaluated

Providers of Promise

We did not include software providers that, as a result of our research and analysis, did not satisfy the criteria for inclusion in this Buyers Guide. These are listed below as “Providers of Promise.”