The Growth Series 2026 | Week 20: 2027 & Beyond – The 'Holy Grail' of the Connected Store
Martin Bailie CEO & founder MWB advisory Ltd
“The Connected Store is the ultimate realisation of the ‘Agentic Leap’—where the alliance of invisible intelligence and human orchestration transforms the store into a strategic powerhouse of localised, profitable growth.” Martin Bailie
Fresh from a high-energy AI Round Table session with Dan Munford , CEO of Insight Research , and the #SmartestStore in the World judging panel,Global Convenience , one thing is abundantly clear: the Connected Store still absolutely fascinates the industry. Despite the rapid evolution of back-end tech, the audience remains gripped by how these innovations finally manifest on the shop floor.
The roadmap for the modern trade has been built on Value and Speed. While we have recently focused on agentic supply chains and decoupled sourcing, the ultimate ‘Holy Grail’ is the seamless, profitable integration of that intelligence into the physical asset: The Connected Store.
The Bailie Perspective
“The conversation with Dan and the judges this week Global Convenience —following the impressive visit Kavanagh’s Belsize Park in London—confirmed it: the boardroom has moved beyond ‘how do we get profitable online?’ to ‘how do we make our physical stores a strategic weapon in 2027?’. Store visits like Kavanagh’s prove that local excellence and high-tech orchestration aren’t mutually exclusive. The Connected Store is the physical realisation of the ‘Agentic Leap’—where inventory, labour, and personalised pricing are dynamically managed in real-time.
“This requires store managers to unlearn the role of ‘taskmaster’ and relearn the role of ‘experience curator’. By leveraging Vusion technology, specifically EdgeSense, we move beyond simple digital price tags to a fully sentient shelf. The integration with Quorso acts as the game changer; it translates this real-time shelf data into immediate, actionable tasks for store teams. This alliance closes the execution gap, ensuring that ‘seeing’ a problem leads to ‘solving’ it in minutes, not days.” MWB Advisory
The CEO Priority: Architecting the Store of 2027
To deliver this connected reality, best-in-class CEOs are refocusing their investments on three critical fronts:
• Unified Inventory and Fulfilment: The mandate is a ‘single source of truth’ for all stock, utilising #EdgeSense for real-time shelf monitoring to make the store the centre of omnichannel operations.
• Hyper-Localised Customer Intelligence: Moving from national marketing to hyper-local, with stores utilising Vusion insights to tailor assortment and dynamic, personalised pricing unique to each shopper’s journey.
• Agentic Labour Allocation: Shifting from rigid shift patterns to agentic systems that dynamically re-allocate store-level hours based on Quorso ‘s prioritisation of in-store tasks, ensuring the right colleague is always where they add most value.
The Reality Check: 2027 Benchmarks
• The Store-as-Hub Model: Leading multi-channel retailers will fulfil over 50% of their online orders from store inventory by 2027.
• The Sentient Shelf: Vusion customers are reporting up to a 90% reduction in out-of-stock instances by shifting to automated shelf monitoring via EdgeSense.
• The Productivity Dividend: Retailers deploying agentic labour allocation through the Vusion & Quorso alliance are reporting a 15% increase in store-level productivity.
• The Investment Shift: By 2027, 35% of total AI expenses will sit outside the IT budget, signaling its transition to a core business engine.
Impact Thinking: The 18-Month Reality
“The Connected Store isn’t about shiny technology; it’s about unlocking the latent value of your physical assets. Leading CEOs are echoing this sentiment—as one major Vusion partner recently noted, ‘The ability to see our shelves in real-time through EdgeSense, coupled with Quorso’s ability to direct my team’s focus, has transformed our store managers from stock-checkers into true commercial leaders.’.
“As Microsoft highlights in their latest retail outlook: ‘The next generation of retail winners will be those who use AI to bridge the gap between digital insights and physical execution, turning every aisle into an intelligent edge.’
“I truly believe that if you aren’t building a store that can ‘think’ for itself in 2026, you’ll be managing a museum by 2027. We must stop using technology to merely ‘monitor’ decline and start using it to ‘engineer’ growth at the shelf edge. By 2027, your stores will be living, breathing nodes in a connected ecosystem. Those who build this foundation today will hold a distinct advantage, turning their stores from a cost centre into a profit engine of localised value.” Martin Bailie
Week 16–26: The Executive Roadmap- Stay informed on my LinkedIn & www.mwb-advisory.com
• Week 18: The Great Decoupling – Sourcing for resilience in a protectionist world.
• Week 19: The Cultural Reset – Building ‘Anti-Fragile’ Teams for the Machine Age.
• Week 20: 2027 & Beyond – The ‘Holy Grail’ of the Connected Store.
• Week 21: The Boardroom Imperative – Measuring the Value of Agentic Sourcing and Margin Defence.
• Week 22: Scaling Strategy to Velocity – Managing the 2027 Transition.
• Week 23: The Circular Mandate – Monetizing Sustainability with RFID 2.0.
• Week 24: Social Commerce & The Point of Purchase Revolution.
• Week 25: The Sentient Store – Vision AI as the Operational “Eye”.
• Week 26: Retail Media – Monetising the Store as a High-Margin Ad Platform.
