Building Digital Independence in Grocery
For grocers, digital transformation is not only about launching a better website or adding new features to the shopping journey. In many cases, the harder challenge is gaining control of the platform itself. When core commerce, customer and marketing capabilities are tied to a parent company’s stack, legacy architecture or a patchwork of external systems, every change becomes slower, riskier and harder to scale.
That is why platform independence matters.
Asda’s online grocery transformation illustrates what this kind of modernization really requires. As part of its journey away from Walmart-managed systems, Asda set out to transition its online grocery business onto its own state-of-the-art platform. The ambition was not simply technical separation. It was a full transformation of ecommerce capability designed to help the retailer move off legacy systems, create a best-in-class agile operating model and deliver a seamless transition for customers.
That combination is what makes digital independence so significant for grocery leaders. The goal is not separation for its own sake. The goal is to own the strategy, operating model and technology foundation needed to evolve faster, improve usability and create better customer experiences without depending on someone else’s roadmap.
Independence is a business transformation, not a migration project
When a grocer moves away from parent-company platforms or entrenched third-party systems, the visible milestone may be a new commerce experience. But the underlying work is much broader. In Asda’s case, the transformation was described as end to end, integrating strategy, product, experience, engineering and data and AI.
That is an important lesson for any retailer pursuing platform independence. A successful separation cannot be treated as a narrow replatforming exercise. It requires a clear business vision, a product model that can prioritize change, customer experiences that hold together during transition, engineering that can modernize the stack safely and data capabilities that preserve insight and personalization.
Without that alignment, independence can create friction instead of momentum. With it, the organization can turn a complex disentanglement into a new foundation for growth.
What grocers need to modernize while separating from legacy systems
1. Strategy that defines what independence is for
Platform ownership should support a larger business objective. In grocery, that often means improving the customer journey, increasing speed to market and giving the business more flexibility to adapt.
Asda’s program was focused on enabling independence while helping the retailer evolve and grow, with an emphasis on exceptional usability and customer experience. That is the right starting point. Independence works best when it is tied to measurable business outcomes, not just technical milestones.
2. Product management that turns transformation into a continuous discipline
A grocer separating from legacy systems cannot rely on large, infrequent releases. The business needs a product-led model that can sequence change, reduce risk and keep delivering value during transition.
Across Publicis Sapient’s retail work, this kind of shift shows up repeatedly. Asda’s international ecommerce engagement used agile delivery to move at pace while enabling continual incremental improvements. Carrefour similarly moved from fragmented digital efforts to integrated agile squads, accelerating delivery and enabling enhancements to happen more frequently without taking the site offline.
For grocers, that means building a roadmap around prioritized customer and business outcomes rather than around isolated technical projects.
3. Experience design that protects the customer during change
In grocery, transformation happens in a high-frequency, high-expectation environment. Customers are not waiting patiently while a retailer modernizes. They still expect fast search, intuitive navigation, relevant offers and reliable fulfillment experiences.
That is why Asda’s goal of a seamless customer transition matters so much. Moving off legacy systems should not come at the cost of customer trust. The experience must improve even while the underlying platform is being rebuilt.
The strongest programs use test-and-learn methods to manage this carefully. In Asda’s international digital work, controlled A/B testing helped validate hypotheses before release while keeping core web vitals within target range. That kind of evidence-based optimization is essential when the business must modernize without disruption.
4. Engineering that reduces dependency and increases speed
True platform independence depends on the architecture and delivery model behind the scenes. Retail transformation programs in Publicis Sapient’s portfolio show how this evolves over time: moving toward service-based architectures, API-driven ecosystems, microservices and more modular platforms that are easier to change and scale.
For grocers, this matters because legacy dependencies often show up everywhere at once: storefronts, order management, content, promotions, fulfillment and marketing operations. Modern engineering allows the business to untangle those dependencies and create a foundation that can support frequent release cycles, higher resilience and more local control.
The payoff is not just technical. Carrefour’s transformation demonstrated how integrated agile teams and a new scaled delivery model helped the business behave more like an enterprise startup. That kind of operating speed is difficult to achieve when core capabilities are still governed by disconnected or inherited systems.
5. Data and AI that preserve relevance as platforms change
A retailer does not become independent simply by owning its commerce stack. It also needs control over customer insight and decisioning.
Asda’s broader work with Publicis Sapient shows the value of connecting platform modernization with data-driven personalization. Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Einstein were used to improve customer segmentation and tailor messaging and offers by country and by individual customer across touchpoints. Publicis Sapient also implemented Asda’s new email marketing tool as part of its transformation program.
The broader lesson is clear: as grocers separate from legacy platforms, they should not lose the ability to understand customers, personalize engagement or optimize marketing performance. In fact, independence should strengthen those capabilities by giving the business a clearer, more usable data foundation.
Operating model change is where independence becomes real
Technology alone does not create an independent digital business. The organization must also change how it works.
In Asda’s case, the transformation aimed to build a best-in-class agile operating model alongside the platform itself. That point is critical. A new platform can quickly become another constraint if teams, governance and delivery practices remain tied to old ways of working.
Retail examples across Publicis Sapient’s work reinforce this. One top global retailer adopted an engineering-first mindset, lean teams and agile methods to scale digital transformation more efficiently. Carrefour consolidated hundreds of separate digital efforts into unified squads that could release more frequently and respond faster to customer needs. These examples show that independence becomes sustainable when teams are empowered to measure, iterate and improve continuously.
The outcome: more control, less friction, better growth potential
When grocers modernize digital platforms while separating from legacy dependencies, the benefits can extend well beyond the initial transition. They gain greater control over roadmap decisions, stronger alignment between business and technology, faster release cycles and a platform foundation that can continue evolving.
Asda’s work demonstrates how this can be approached without losing sight of the customer. The objective was an entirely independent Asda-owned platform, supported by end-to-end transformation capabilities and designed for seamless change. Combined with agile delivery, controlled testing and stronger marketing and personalization foundations, that approach points to a larger truth for grocery leaders: independence is most valuable when it improves both how the business operates and how customers shop.
For grocers facing inherited platforms, aging ecosystems or deep third-party dependency, the path forward is not just to replace technology. It is to build a digital business that can stand on its own, adapt with speed and keep getting better over time.