You think you've built the perfect retail tech stack. Your vendors are leaders in their respective spaces—best-in-class ecommerce, specialized point of sale, top-rated ERP. Your systems appear to work together seamlessly. This "best-of-breed" approach can work well for organizations with strong technical teams and substantial resources. But if you're stitching together multiple solutions to connect your online and in-store operations, you might be falling into a common retail trap—one where resources are consumed by maintenance instead of driving growth and innovation.
We've been in your shoes, or very similarly looking shoes. As former technology leaders at global retail brands like Glossier, Michael Kors, and Beachbody, we've experienced the drain of maintaining complex integrations between ecommerce, order management, point-of-sale, and ERP systems. Now, as Shopify's Field CTO team, we're here to share what we learned: what many retailers consider unified commerce is actually technical debt that's masquerading as progress.
This isn't just our opinion. The evidence is clear: while some retailers accelerate innovation and capture their share of the $3.3 trillion unified commerce opportunity, others remain tangled in integration webs that drain resources and stifle growth. So what are the best retailers doing differently? They understand that true digital transformation in the pursuit of unified commerce isn't just about connecting systems—it's about eliminating the need for those connections entirely.
At Shopify, we've guided dozens of retail brands to a crucial insight: while specialized integrations have their place, building your core commerce operations on multiple "best-of-breed" solutions creates unnecessary complexity. Here's why leading retailers are choosing to unify their essential commerce functions on a single platform, and what that means for their ability to compete.
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The best-of-breed trap: Integration and complexity overload
We often hear CTOs proudly describe their "best-of-breed" approach—stitching together top solutions for each part of their business, including online and physical stores. For organizations with deep technical expertise, substantial development resources, and specific vertical requirements, this approach can deliver unique competitive advantages. The logic is compelling: maintain flexibility, choose specialized tools, and preserve control over your tech stack.
However, since the early 2010s, when this microservices approach became the architectural ideal, many retailers have discovered that the maintenance burden outweighs the benefits, especially if they don't have the infrastructure to support it.
Most retail technology vendors have mastered the art of making integration look like unification. They'll show you sleek dashboards, promise real-time data flow, and talk about "seamless" connections between systems. But take a peek behind the curtain, and you'll find a maze of APIs, bloated middleware, and flimsy integration points holding everything together.
Your best-of-breed vendors who offer a "unified" solution likely fall into one of two categories:
1. The Bridger (integration over unification)
With the bridger approach, single-solution vendors typically offer two paths to "unification." But both lead to the same integration challenges:
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Path 1: Pre-built integrations: They'll offer ready-made connections between their core solution (like ecommerce) and complementary systems (like point of sale). While this seems convenient, these pre-built integrations are designed for the lowest common denominator—addressing only the most common use cases and missing the unique needs of your business. You're left either compromising on functionality or paying for custom development to handle your specific requirements.
- Path 2: DIY integration: Alternatively, a vendor might provide APIs and documentation for you to build your own integrations. This path requires significant technical expertise, dedicated development resources, and ongoing maintenance. Your team becomes responsible for managing API rate limits, handling latency issues, and troubleshooting complex errors—which can get especially challenging for high-volume operations.
Both approaches create what we call the "messy middle"—a complex web of integrations between systems that weren't designed to work together. Every bridge you build becomes yet another point of failure requiring constant monitoring and maintenance to keep these disparate systems in sync.
What the Bridger model looks like
2. The Buyer (bolted-on solutions)
Your platform has acquired different solutions and bolted them onto their core offering. For example, an ecommerce vendor buys a POS vendor and rebrands the acquired system. While these solutions share the same brand name, the unified appearance masks a complex reality: you're still managing multiple disparate systems, each with its own data model, codebase, and development environment.
What looks like a single platform is actually a collection of architecturally different products that communicate through integration layers. Your teams must navigate multiple back offices, handle conflicting APIs, and maintain synchronization between siloed databases—all while managing the technical debt that comes from forcing fundamentally different systems to work together.
With bolted-on solutions, your teams end up bouncing between multiple interfaces and workflows just to complete basic tasks. And regular maintenance dominates your technology roadmap. Your teams spend valuable time bouncing between interfaces, managing system synchronization, and re-implementing customizations across disconnected environments. When internal partners request new features that could drive business growth, you're forced to decline or delay because your resources are consumed by just keeping these disparate systems working together.
What the Buyer model looks like
The hidden cost of fragmentation
There’s an outsized cost to maintaining a patchwork of fragmented systems, as Shopify’s VP of Engineering Patrick Joyce explained. He coined this as the “fragmentation tax”—a hidden cost that manifests in four critical dimensions:
The four dimensions of fragmentation tax
Technical overhead
- Multiple codebases demanding separate maintenance
- Redundant development work across platforms
- Security vulnerabilities from complex integration points
- Increased risk of system-wide failures
Operational friction
- Manual data reconciliation burning staff hours
- Error-prone duplicate data entry
- Multiple vendor relationships straining resources
- Extensive cross-system training requirements
Business lag
- Widening gap between opportunity and execution
- Delayed time-to-market for new features
- Inconsistent cross-channel customer experience
- Limited visibility into purchasing trends, inventory, and operations across channels
Innovation deficit
- Developer time consumed by maintenance
- Staff hours lost to system reconciliation
- Rising costs for specialized platform expertise
- Technology budgets shifted from innovation to maintenance
The impact of the fragmentation tax is real and measurable. Take KEEN, the outdoor footwear brand: Their pre-transformation tech landscape was a maze of disconnected systems—from Salesforce Commerce Cloud to Micros POS, held together by a web of third-party integrations. The complexity forced teams to work in isolation, each requiring specialized expertise to manage their piece of the puzzle. When the maintenance burden became too heavy, they turned to external agencies—a solution that proved both costly and unsustainable.
As KEEN's Director of Digital Product Sam Buckingham explains: "We had to act like a software company rather than focusing on what we do best—making great shoes and telling great stories." By eliminating their fragmented systems and moving to true unified commerce with Shopify, KEEN reduced their technology total cost of ownership by 80% while simultaneously accelerating their global expansion.
The "best-of-breed" approach can be powerful for some businesses, but it comes with significant requirements: deep technical expertise, substantial maintenance budgets, and dedicated development resources. Without this foundation, what starts as strategic flexibility—choosing premier solutions for each part of your business—can become technical quicksand. Each new integration adds another layer of complexity, another point of failure, another resource demand.
We've seen many brands learn this lesson the hard way, with their teams spending more time maintaining system connections than driving innovation. The key isn't whether this approach is right or wrong, but whether your business is truly equipped to support it long-term. Before embarking on this path, it's crucial to assess if your organization has the necessary infrastructure and resources to turn a best-of-breed strategy into a competitive advantage rather than a technical burden.
What real unification looks like
Think about your smartphone. You don't need an integration to make your camera talk to your photo gallery, or your contacts to connect with your messaging. It's all native to the operating system. That's what true unification looks like—and it's what modern retail demands.
True unified commerce operates on the same principle. Instead of replacing your entire technology stack, it's simplified. Product, order, and customer data flow in real-time from a single source of truth to every channel—including ecommerce and point of sale—without requiring integrations or APIs.
Having led similar transformations at global retail brands, we understand the real challenges of making the move to unified commerce: migrating data, managing downtime, retraining teams, and preserving critical customizations. Even with these risks, we've also repeatedly seen how the business impact makes the transition worthwhile.
According to research from a leading independent consulting firm, retailers who unify online and in-store systems on Shopify dramatically reduce their technology costs—25% less in maintenance, 27% less in middleware, and 89% less in third-party support. By combining these cost savings with better customer experiences—like store associates having instant access to shoppers' complete purchase history—these retailers achieved an average 8.9% uplift in gross merchandise value (GMV). This is what happens when teams can focus on driving business value rather than managing connections between systems.
According to independent research, retailers on Shopify experienced:
- • 25% reduction in maintenance costs
- • 27% decrease in middleware costs
- • 89% drop in third-party support costs
While unified commerce offers clear advantages, it's important to acknowledge potential trade-offs. Some organizations may find they need to adapt existing workflows, adjust to platform limitations, or develop new ways to handle unique business requirements. The key is determining whether the benefits of unification outweigh these considerations for your specific business context.
With true unification on Shopify, business teams gain the autonomy to launch new features through our app ecosystem without waiting for developer resources. This aligns with where retail is headed—Gartner research shows 55% of retail CIOs plan to adopt low-code/no-code platforms by 2025, recognizing the value of empowering non-technical teams to move quickly.
For technical teams concerned about vendor lock-in, Shopify's open APIs and developer tools ensure you maintain the flexibility to build custom solutions as your needs evolve, while standardized data models make it easier to integrate—or migrate—your data. Developers maintain just one integration point from your ERP, WMS, or OMS to your unified commerce data on Shopify, allowing them to focus on strategic initiatives rather than maintaining connections.
This autonomy isn't just about speed—it's about optimizing your most valuable technical resources. Instead of managing separate connections between your ecommerce, POS, and essential business systems, developers maintain just one integration point from your ERP, WMS, or OMS to your unified commerce data on Shopify. This frees up your developers to focus on high-leverage projects that truly differentiate your business.
The path forward: Digital transformation to true unified commerce
While some well-resourced retailers continue to succeed with best-of-breed approaches, many are discovering the advantages of true unification, particularly for core commerce operations. Forward-thinking retailers are already making their move to Shopify—where ecommerce and POS are natively unified in a single system, not connected through integrations.
The transformation journey begins by unifying your core commerce operations onto a single platform. While this transition requires careful planning—from data migration and staff training to managing potential downtime—the results justify the effort. Shopify natively connects what other vendors can't: your ecommerce website and physical store operations, reducing both costs and complexity through one source of truth for your commerce data. This aligns with Forrester1 research on retail leaders' top priority: simplifying operations by combining systems rather than adding more specialized solutions.
Here's what this transformation looks like in practice:
- Jewelry brand Mejuri spent most of their time building and maintaining third-party integrations, until they moved to Shopify's unified commerce platform. Now their team focuses on customer experience, business growth, and international expansion. As Mejuri's Chief Digital Officer Rohit Nathany explains, "It's really great to actually feel relieved that I'm spending more time thinking about what else I can do on behalf of our customers and how to grow the business, rather than worry about the technical debt."
- Parachute, the bedding and homeware brand, also highlights the tangible business impact of true unification. After consolidating their commerce operations on Shopify, they achieved 500% growth in buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS) revenue over four years, increased average order value by 12%, and reduced operational expenses by $1M. Their founder, Ariel Kaye, explains: "Through Shopify, we're able to give customers updates and provide the best experience because we have a single source of truth."
This is the difference between simply maintaining software versus leveraging technology for growth.
Moving to Shopify transformed how we operate and significantly reduced the total cost of ownership of our technology stack. Instead of managing complex systems that require specialized expertise, we now have a platform that enables our teams to work cross-functionally and efficiently. For enterprise retailers looking to simplify operations while accelerating growth, it's a game-changer.
Sam Buckingham, Director of Digital Product, KEEN
Transform today, lead tomorrow
The retail industry's next leaders will be defined by their ability to choose and maintain the right technology approach for their business—whether that's a well-supported best-of-breed architecture or a unified commerce platform. The evidence is clear: true unified commerce isn't just another technology choice—it's the foundation for retail innovation and growth.
While you're reading this, retail changemakers are breaking free from inherited system constraints. They refuse to accept APIs and integrations as a necessary burden. Instead, they're transforming their businesses with Shopify's unified commerce platform, and finally able to:
- Drive innovation instead of debugging connections
- Empower teams with intuitive, unified tools
- Deliver the seamless experiences across online shopping and in-store visits
- Compete at the speed of digital retail
- Focus technology resources on strategic growth
The path forward is clear. The technology is proven. Changemakers like you are already showing what's possible by eliminating technical barriers and accelerating their digital transformation.
The only question left is: Will you be the changemaker who transforms your retail operation, or will you watch from the sidelines as others define retail's future?
Meet Shopify's Field CTO Team
Eduardo Frias
Eduardo is a transformational technology leader who has architected digital evolution for major retail brands including Beachbody, Stella & Dot, and Johnson & Johnson. With decades of experience driving enterprise-scale change, Eduardo helps global brands move beyond technical complexity and gain a competitive advantage through unified commerce.
Sandy Jeong
Sandy is a veteran retail technology executive who drove Glossier's digital transformation as VP of Digital & Technology, and led strategic initiatives at Amazon, including the launch of Amazon Pharmacy. With leadership experience at both digital-native and traditional retail brands, Sandy brings unmatched insight into how unified commerce transforms retail operations at scale.
Peyman Naeini
Peyman is a renowned enterprise technology strategist who has guided retail transformation at retail powerhouses including Michael Kors, Arcadia Group, and Mint Velvet. Known for combining deep technical expertise with practical business acumen, Peyman helps brands unlock trapped potential in their commerce operations.
Read more
- The Cost of Delaying Unified Commerce in Retail
- If Your Business is Striving for Omnichannel, You're Already Behind
- KEEN Achieves 80% Cost Reduction while Accelerating Omnichannel Growth
- How Mejuri Unifies Commerce with Shopify: Exclusive Interview
- Allbirds Reduces Costs and Boosts Conversions with Ship from Store on Shopify POS
- Good American Finds Perfect Fit for Unified Commerce on Shopify
1 Source: Forrester’s Industry and Customer Supporting Software Survey, 2025. Base: 3000 Software decision-makers.
