Global retailers do not usually struggle because they lack digital ambition.

Global retailers do not usually struggle because they lack digital ambition. They struggle because growth creates complexity faster than the organization can manage it. New markets launch on different timelines. Regional teams introduce local features to meet real business needs. Storefronts evolve independently. Code is copied, adapted and rarely retired. Release practices vary by market. Over time, what began as flexibility becomes fragmentation.

That is when commerce modernization stops being a platform question alone and becomes an operating model challenge. Every upgrade grows slower. Every regression cycle gets longer. Every market-specific exception raises the cost of change. Leaders may still be investing in innovation, but too much effort is going into maintaining difference rather than scaling what works.

As a global retailer with e-commerce operations across markets, Pandora faced the tension many international brands know well: how to deliver consistent digital experiences at scale without ignoring local nuance. In APAC, that challenge had become especially visible. The region was operating on an outdated Salesforce Commerce environment with unique customizations and local flexibility requirements that were costly and labor-intensive to maintain. More broadly, fragmented e-commerce execution across markets was limiting agility and making change harder to sustain.

This is the pattern many global retailers recognize. The business problem is not simply that storefronts differ by country. It is that too many differences live in the wrong place. When regional requirements are embedded deep in custom code, and when multiple storefronts evolve without a shared foundation, every release becomes a coordination exercise. Teams spend more time reconciling variations, testing exceptions and managing upgrade risk than delivering new value to customers.

For Pandora, Publicis Sapient’s approach was not to force uniformity for its own sake. It was to define what should be common, isolate what truly needed to stay local and simplify the technical estate so the organization could move faster. The work enabled a common codebase, shared functionality and storefront implementation across Pandora’s e-commerce platforms. In APAC, Publicis Sapient decoupled the region’s unique custom code and rebuilt it from scratch, removing redundant and duplicate code that had made future maintenance harder and slower than it needed to be.

That decision matters because duplicate customization creates hidden drag. A workaround may solve one local issue quickly, but when dozens of those workarounds accumulate, they weaken the whole delivery system. Upgrades become risky. Testing expands. Dependencies multiply. Platform owners cannot scale improvements efficiently because every change must be interpreted region by region.

First, standardize the shared core. A global commerce organization needs common foundations for code, functionality and storefront patterns wherever those elements do not create competitive differentiation at the market level. Shared foundations reduce duplication, lower maintenance burden and make releases easier to coordinate across regions.

Second, isolate true localization needs. Local relevance still matters. Market nuance, regulatory conditions, customer expectations and digital maturity levels vary. The goal is not to eliminate local flexibility. The goal is to separate the localization that creates real business value from the customization that has simply accumulated over time. When retailers make that distinction clearly, they can preserve market responsiveness without compromising scale.

Third, simplify aggressively. Modernization is often slowed by the instinct to carry old complexity into new environments. Pandora’s APAC work took the opposite approach. By decoupling unique custom code and rebuilding it cleanly, Publicis Sapient removed redundant and duplicate logic instead of preserving it. For global retailers, this is a crucial lesson: not every legacy behavior deserves to be migrated. Simplification is often where the economics of scale are won.

Fourth, align the foundation with agile ways of working. Technology standardization alone will not improve release performance if teams still operate in silos or rely on fragmented governance. Pandora’s broader transformation included removing silos between marketing, commercial operations and technology, supported by cross-functional ways of working and a test-and-learn mindset. That combination helped the business move with greater speed and agility, not just in platform delivery but in launching new omnichannel experiences.

The outcomes reinforce why this model matters. Pandora’s updated Salesforce Commerce application was deployed in just over two months using agile development processes. Migration time was cut in half. Release velocity improved from several months to a matter of weeks. After the first successful migration, the e-commerce applications required no additional downtime. Those are strong delivery metrics, but their real significance is operational. They signal a shift from fragmented execution to repeatable delivery.

For a global retailer, that means regional teams can respond faster to customer and market needs. It means upgrades become more routine and less disruptive. It means central platform teams can spend less time managing technical debt and more time enabling new capabilities.

Just as importantly, a common commerce foundation creates benefits beyond the storefront. Pandora’s broader transformation included omnichannel fulfillment modernization through IBM Sterling Order Management on Cloud, initially in Australia and New Zealand. That work improved real-time inventory visibility, optimized returns and refunds, supported ship-to-home and enabled services such as Click-and-Collect and Store Fulfillment. In practical terms, it strengthened the operational backbone needed to support connected customer journeys across channels.

This matters because fragmented commerce is rarely only a storefront issue. The same regional exceptions and disconnected processes that slow digital releases often appear in fulfillment, service and post-purchase experiences as well. A retailer cannot claim unified commerce if inventory visibility is weak, returns processes are inconsistent or customer service lacks shared context. The common foundation has to support the broader retail model.

Pandora’s example also shows why modernization should be treated as an ongoing capability, not a one-time program. Publicis Sapient continued to support Pandora through managed services and ongoing optimization after the initial migration. That continuity is important. Even the right architecture can degrade if release discipline fades, exceptions multiply again or teams revert to market-by-market reinvention. Scalable delivery is sustained through governance, support and continuous improvement.

If each region behaves like its own commerce build, scale will always be fragile. If every local need turns into a permanent customization, release velocity will slow. If the platform is modern but the operating model is not, teams will still struggle to ship consistently.

The more effective path is to modernize around a shared core, protect room for real localization, eliminate redundant complexity and organize teams around agile, cross-functional delivery. That is how global retailers can reduce risk without becoming rigid. It is how they can support local relevance without sacrificing maintainability. And it is how commerce transformation begins to compound rather than reset with every upgrade.

A common commerce foundation is not about making every market identical. It is about making growth repeatable. Pandora’s journey demonstrates that when retailers simplify what has become overly custom, standardize what should be shared and connect the technology foundation to better ways of working, they can move from fragmented execution to scalable delivery with much greater confidence.