APAC Retail Transformation: Building a Scalable Commerce Foundation Without Losing Local Relevance

For multinational retailers, APAC is both a growth engine and a complexity test. The region brings together markets with very different levels of digital maturity, different customer expectations, and different operational realities across commerce, fulfillment and service. That means retail transformation in APAC cannot be approached as a simple rollout of a global template. It requires a model that creates consistency where scale matters, while preserving flexibility where local execution wins.

Working with Publicis Sapient, Pandora modernized an outdated Salesforce Commerce environment in APAC, reduced the burden of custom code, accelerated release cycles from several months to a matter of weeks and established a stronger foundation for omnichannel fulfillment in Australia and New Zealand. The result was not just a technology upgrade. It was a more agile regional operating model that better positioned the business to scale.

The APAC challenge: one region, many realities

Many global retailers enter APAC with a familiar problem. Their brand may be global, but their digital estate is not. Over time, regional teams often layer local customizations onto aging platforms to meet immediate market needs. What begins as flexibility can quickly turn into fragmentation: duplicated code, inconsistent storefront capabilities, slow release cycles and operational workarounds that make innovation harder with every update.

That challenge becomes even more pronounced in APAC, where one market may be digitally advanced and highly service-oriented, while another is still building foundational omnichannel capabilities. Leaders need a way to support local nuance without letting each market become its own isolated platform.

Pandora faced exactly this kind of challenge. In APAC, the business was operating an outdated Salesforce Commerce RefApp environment with unique customizations and local flexibility requirements that were costly and labor-intensive to maintain. Releases were slow. Scaling improvements across markets was difficult. And the region needed a better path toward alignment with the broader enterprise.

Pandora’s APAC modernization: simplify the core, speed the edge

Publicis Sapient partnered with Pandora to upgrade and optimize the region’s Salesforce Commerce environment using an agile delivery approach. The goal was not to erase what made APAC distinct. It was to create a cleaner, more maintainable foundation that could support both regional needs and enterprise consistency.

The team enabled a common codebase, shared functionality and storefront implementation across Pandora’s e-commerce platforms. In APAC specifically, Publicis Sapient decoupled unique custom code and rebuilt it from scratch, removing redundant and duplicate code that had been adding complexity to every change.

This work moved quickly. The updated Salesforce Commerce application was deployed in just over two months. Since the first successful migration, Pandora’s release velocity improved from several months to a matter of weeks, migration time was cut in half and ongoing releases no longer required additional downtime.

Those outcomes matter because in APAC, speed is not a nice-to-have. It is a strategic capability. When markets evolve quickly, retailers need to launch, test and refine digital experiences without waiting for long, brittle release cycles.

Modern commerce alone is not enough

Retail leaders know that storefront improvements only solve part of the problem. Customers experience a brand across browsing, buying, delivery, pickup, returns and service. If those systems are disconnected, even the best digital front end will eventually expose operational friction.

That is why Pandora’s transformation extended beyond commerce into order management and omnichannel fulfillment.

Working with IBM, Publicis Sapient helped migrate Pandora’s order management to IBM Sterling Order Management on Cloud, initially focused on Australia and New Zealand. Through workshops centered on APAC market needs, the team identified manual processes, limited inventory reconciliation and outdated customer service tools that were constraining the experience.

The new fulfillment environment supported consolidated e-commerce fulfillment, real-time inventory visibility, improved ship-to-home services, optimized returns and refunds, and capabilities such as Click-and-Collect and Store Fulfillment. In Australia and New Zealand, this laid the groundwork for stronger cross-channel operations, better support for post-purchase inquiries and a platform that could be extended into additional markets over time.

For retailers operating across APAC, that sequence is important: simplify the commerce core, then connect it to a fulfillment model that can support local service expectations at scale.

A practical playbook for multinational retailers in APAC

Pandora’s journey points to a broader transformation playbook for retail leaders managing growth across diverse APAC markets.

1. Standardize the foundation, not every market behavior

A common platform matters. Shared codebases, common services and reusable storefront components reduce maintenance overhead and make releases faster and safer. But standardization should focus on the core foundation, not on forcing identical customer experiences in every market. Local teams still need room to adapt around language, service models, promotions and channel preferences.

2. Treat custom code as a business decision, not a default

Regional customizations often begin with good intent, but over time they can become a drag on speed, cost and resilience. Pandora’s APAC modernization shows the value of decoupling and removing redundant code so future improvements become easier to deliver. The question for leaders is not whether customization is possible, but whether it creates durable advantage.

3. Build fulfillment as a growth capability

In APAC, fulfillment is often where global ambition meets local complexity. Inventory visibility, returns, click-and-collect and store-based fulfillment are not back-office details. They are core parts of the customer promise. Modern order management creates the operational backbone for delivering more consistent omnichannel experiences, even as service expectations vary by market.

4. Personalization depends on connected systems

Retailers cannot deliver relevant, high-value experiences if commerce, service and fulfillment data live in silos. Pandora’s broader transformation shows how a connected foundation can support more personalized engagement over time, including AI-powered service and shopping experiences. Personalization works best when it is built on unified data and operational visibility, not disconnected point solutions.

5. Agility is an operating model, not just a delivery method

One of the most important lessons from Pandora is that transformation was not only technical. Publicis Sapient helped remove silos between marketing, commercial operations and technology, applying cross-functional ways of working and a test-and-learn mindset. That shift enabled faster execution and made it easier to launch new omnichannel experiences quickly. In APAC, where market conditions can shift rapidly, agile ways of working are just as important as agile platforms.

From regional modernization to long-term advantage

For multinational retailers, APAC can expose every weakness in a fragmented digital estate. But it can also become the proving ground for a better model: one that combines global platform consistency with local executional flexibility.

Pandora’s APAC journey demonstrates what that looks like in practice. By modernizing Salesforce Commerce, reducing custom-code complexity, accelerating releases and strengthening omnichannel fulfillment in Australia and New Zealand, Publicis Sapient helped create a foundation that was simpler, faster and more scalable. Just as importantly, the work supported a more agile way of operating across functions and markets.

The lesson for retail leaders is clear. Transformation in APAC should not be framed as global versus local. The real opportunity is to design a retail platform and operating model where both can coexist: a strong common core, local nuance at the edge and the agility to keep improving as customer expectations evolve.