Laurence Smith
Managing Director Retail
Richard Lim
CEO, Retail EconomicsDigital maturity is no longer optional in European retail. Our recent research with Retail Economics shows it has become the dividing line between retailers that are pulling ahead and those falling behind.
What’s striking is that the most digitally mature retailers aren’t winning because they chase every new technology. They’re winning because they execute consistently, at scale, and with clear intent, turning digital capability into commercial advantage.
For many retailers, the challenge isn’t understanding what should be done. It’s knowing where to focus when time, capital, talent, and risk appetite are constrained.
In this article, we draw on our recent research with Retail Economics to highlight five retailers that stand out as digital leaders and examine what their real-world choices reveal about turning digital capability into measurable impact.
Next: when digital capability becomes a revenue stream
Next stands out not just for how advanced its technology is, but for how deliberately it has been commercialised. Through its Total Platform, Next has built an API-first, modular backbone that allows partner brands to plug into shared services for ecommerce, warehousing, delivery, returns, and customer care.
This isn’t a side project; it’s a profit engine. In the year to January 2025, profits from Investments and Total Platform rose sharply, from £42.8m to £76.6m, demonstrating that digital infrastructure itself can become a scalable business line.
Next shows how a composable infrastructure, standard interfaces, and tight governance can be monetised at scale, turning technology capability into a profitable service line.
Lidl: securing growth through sovereign infrastructure
For Schwarz Group, the owner of Lidl, digital maturity has been as much about digital sovereignty and resilience as about innovation.
By transforming its internal IT backbone into a commercial cloud and AI platform, Schwarz Group has reduced reliance on hyperscalers while securing scalability and compliance with data sovereignty requirements. Operating tens of thousands of servers and petabytes of data, the platform now supports internal operations and external clients.
What’s notable is the strategic intent – infrastructure is treated as both a shield against disruption and a new growth lever. In an environment of regulatory pressure and operational volatility, resilience itself becomes competitive advantage.
Sainsbury’s: turning first-party data into advantage
Retail media is booming, but scaling it without fragmenting data, governance or measurement is where many retailers struggle.
Sainsbury’s Nectar360 took a different approach with Pollen, a unified, AI-enabled retail media platform built on first-party data. Instead of treating on-site, off-site, and in-store media as separate channels, Pollen connects them. It allows advertisers to plan and execute end-to-end campaigns against a single, trusted customer identity.
The result is a platform designed for trust, scale, and operational efficiency, making retail media easier to buy, measure, and optimise for brands and agencies alike. A great example of digital maturity expressed through data discipline and operational AI.
IKEA: scaling innovation from the inside out
IKEA has taken a people-first approach to digital maturity, treating technology adoption as a cultural challenge as much as a technical one.
Through a global AI literacy programme spanning thousands of co-workers and senior leaders, IKEA is embedding AI capability deep into the organisation. Training covers everything from AI fundamentals and generative AI to responsible use and digital ethics, ensuring skills are built at scale rather than concentrated in specialist teams.
By investing in people, ethics and everyday use, IKEA is building digital maturity that compounds over time.
Co-op: when partnerships drive efficiency and innovation
For Co-op, digital maturity has been accelerated through a deliberate partnership-led delivery model. Rather than scaling internal teams, Co-op has focused on flexing capability in line with demand by working with Zühlke through a dedicated team model.
With this approach, Co-op is able to scale engineering capacity during peaks while maintaining quality, governance, and cost control. This model reduces overhead, frees up internal teams to focus on priority projects, and supports the delivery of critical initiatives at pace.
The result is a pragmatic approach to digital maturity – one that prioritises execution and efficiency, treating partnerships as a strategic capability.
Take the next step from ambition to execution
Together, these five retailers show that there is no single blueprint for digital maturity in European retail. They differ in size, operating model, and strategic focus, yet all are pulling ahead for the same reason – they have moved from ambition to execution.
What unites them isn’t the technology they use, but how deliberately they deploy it. Digital capability is treated as core infrastructure, governed, and scaled with clear intent. Whether through platform monetisation, data-led retail media, sovereign infrastructure, partnership-led delivery, or cultural investment in skills, these retailers have aligned technology decisions to outcomes that matter.
For most retailers, the challenge isn’t knowing what should be done. It’s making the right trade-offs, focusing investment where it compounds, and building the organisational muscle to execute consistently over time.
At Zühlke, we partner with organisations to set clear priorities and turn them into action, from modernising legacy platforms and moving to the cloud to embedding AI in ways that deliver real impact. Reach out to our team to explore what digital maturity could look like for your organisation.
