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Retail innovation is no longer optional. But it shouldn’t feel like complexity.

Retail innovation is no longer optional. But it shouldn’t feel like complexity.

At Shoptalk 2025, Kyndryl’s Brandon Rael mapped how infrastructure, AI, and frontline operations are being rebalanced to deliver clarity—not chaos—for retail teams under pressure.

Mairi-Claire Tay
April 18, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

From legacy to leverage

Three years after its spinout from IBM, Kyndryl is acting less like a legacy player and more like a startup with reach. It now partners with retailers across formats and regions, providing infrastructure strategy that moves beyond IT support into commercial impact.

At Shoptalk 2025, Brandon Rael, Strategy & Operations Leader, positioned Kyndryl as a translator—between ambition and implementation, between technology and operational reality. The retailers they work with aren’t chasing transformation. They’re trying to make sense of it.

Innovation that fits

Too often, Rael noted, innovation is treated as a top-down initiative or one-time tech deployment. The result is hesitation. Teams fear cost, scale, or internal complexity. Kyndryl’s approach is different: embed value early, move incrementally, and deliver impact that frontline teams can feel.

Many retailers are facing multiple pressures at once—from customer expectations to operational debt. In that context, innovation has to be sequenced, not stacked.

AI where it matters

AI has become table stakes, but where it’s used—and how it integrates—still varies widely.

Kyndryl focuses on embedding AI into retail workflows, with three priority areas:

Search and discovery, enabling more intuitive product findability
Personalization, driven by contextual insights rather than segmentation
Supply chain optimization, helping brands match inventory and demand in real time

The aim is not automation for its own sake. It’s clarity. When embedded properly, Rael argued, AI becomes a tool that extends decision-making, not complicates it.

Frontline, not forgotten

Kyndryl also supports retailers in modernizing store operations. The company sees frontline enablement as a major driver of loyalty and efficiency—whether through real-time inventory systems, connected IoT tools, or mobile-first workflows.

There is no longer a clean line between digital and in-store expectations. Customers expect associates to have the same access and speed. Brands that can deliver this cohesion will win.

Scaling without sprawl

Retailers want control. Not just more software. Rael emphasized that successful transformation often hinges on platforms that reduce friction across teams. Kyndryl’s ecosystem includes partners like Google Cloud, but the company remains tech-agnostic—focused on flexibility, not lock-in.

The goal is to build systems that evolve with the business. Not all transformation needs to feel like a disruption. Sometimes, the edge is simply starting in the right place.