For many retailers, the biggest technology challenges don't begin on the website or mobile app, they start inside the store. A payment terminal suddenly stops working, the store Wi-Fi slows down, inventory scanners fail tosync, or the billing system becomes sluggish during peak shopping hours. These issues may appear isolated, but together they disrupt store operations, frustrate customers, and directly affect sales. 

The challenge is that most retailers operate these systems through different vendors. Point of Sale (POS), loyalty programmes, inventory management, billing software, payment gateways, and network infrastructure often function independently, which makes it difficult for store and IT teams to identify the actual source of a problem. 

“Fragmentation has been the default state of Indian retail IT,” says Ganesh Narasimhadevara, Director of Solutions Consulting, New Relic. “Most Indian retailers today run an average of around three tools even for observability alone, which means insights are siloed, alert fatigue is high, and when something breaks, engineers are juggling between dashboards to solve a problem.” 

The lack of visibility becomes even more problematic in offline retail, where every minute of downtime can impact customer experience. If a POS terminal fails during a busy weekend or handheld devices cannot access inventory because of poor network connectivity, store staff are often left troubleshooting without knowing whether the issue lies with the network, software, payment provider, or backend systems. 

According to Ganesh, retailers need a unified way to monitor these disconnected systems rather than relying on separate dashboards. New Relic addresses this challenge by bringing data from different technology layers into a single observability platform. The platform can monitor third-party dependencies through distributed tracing, application performance monitoring (APM), service maps, and real-time dashboards. This allows retailers to track external services such as payment processors, inventory platforms, shipping APIs, and other business-critical applications from one place. 

For Indian retailers, however, replacing existing technology is rarely practical. Many mid-sized retailers continue to rely on legacy systems, have lean IT teams, and operate within limited technology budgets. Large-scale infrastructure upgrades can be expensive and disruptive. Such retailers don’t need to start over. “The answer is layering, not replacing, as the architecture is built for it,” mentions Ganesh. 

Rather than replacing existing infrastructure, observability can be added on top of current systems. For example, retailers using SAP can monitor business processes across both SAP and non-SAP environments through an agentless approach, allowing them to gain visibility without overhauling their technology stack. 

Physical stores remain the primary touchpoint for many Indian consumers, thus, improving visibility into offline operations is quite important. From POS systems and store Wi-Fi to inventory devices, every technology works together. When one system fails, it can disrupt the entire shopping experience. 

For retailers, the goal is no longer just to keep systems running but to quickly spot and fix problems before they affect customers. Better visibility helps reduce downtime, improve operations, and deliver a smoother in-store experience.  

Sharing about theri work with a leading multinational eyewear company in India, Ganesh says, “With a dual focus across digital orders and physical store operations, they demonstrate the kind of hybrid retail complexity that goes beyond the need for traditional monitoring. They use New Relic to ensure that all technical and business KPIs are being met, andidentify root causes more quickly. Since working with us, they have gained complete visibility into their entire customer journey in one place. This enables them to identify where customers experience friction, to seamlessly correlate data sets and fix problems quickly.”