By Santhosh Subramaniam, AVP & Head of Domain Consulting for Consumer, Retail and Logistics, Infosys
As per a recent McKinsey survey, 71 percent of merchants say AI merchandising tools have not had a very strong impact on their business so far, while 61 percent say that their organisations are not at all or only slightly prepared to scale AI across merchandising. These numbers indicate that companies are testing AI in isolated pockets, but they are still figuring out how to weave it into the fabric of daily operations.
Retail rarely stands still. Consumer preferences can turn on a dime, and businesses must keep inventory, fulfilment, and engagement aligned across every channel at once. That complexity is increasingly outpacing what human judgment alone can manage.
AI now helps close that gap. Early on, it mainly boosted productivity on individual tasks. Now, retailers are pushing further, looking to expand these capabilities enterprise-wide so that systems can help shape decisions and carry out actions as a normal part of running the business. AI factories are emerging as the backbone of this shift, giving retailers a way to scale the partnership between people and intelligent systems across the organisation.
Moving beyond role-based co-pilots
Enterprise AI’s first chapter belonged to co-pilots. Across functions, these tools worked as smart assistants, cutting the time employees spent gathering information, analysing data, and handling routine work, letting teams move faster and more consistently. Even so, people remained responsible for interpreting insights, deciding what to do, and carrying out the tasks.
Next up, agentic co-creators built for far more independence. These systems can monitor business conditions, spot opportunities, weigh possible actions, and set responses in motion independently. Instead of just supporting the work, they often become part of doing it.
That shift changes how retailers generate value. A co-pilot might flag a shift in demand for a merchant to investigate; a co-creator can take it further, weighing the options and acting on the ones that make sense. The same logic applies on the store floor: AI is moving past simply suggesting staffing levels towards actively adjusting schedules and priorities as conditions change. People still own the outcomes, but more and more, they are sharing the workload with systems that do not just analyse. They act.
Building a hybrid intelligence workforce
As adoption grows, isolated pilots alone will not deliver enterprise value. It requires an operating model capable of developing, deploying, governing, and refining intelligent systems at scale.
AI factories are central to making that happen. They give retailers a structured way to build and manage AI capabilities, moving past isolated experiments towards genuine collaboration between employees and intelligent systems in everyday work, spanning functions and workflows alike.
The business impact is already visible. As per a recent survey, nearly nine in ten retailers deploying AI report revenue improvements, while 95 percent say that AI is helping with annual cost reductions. This is encouraging organisations to apply AI across the value chain, not just as a bolt-on productivity tool for individuals.
What is emerging is a hybrid workforce: people contributing judgment, experience, and accountability, and AI systems handling continuous analysis and heavy data lifting. Together, people and AI can respond to shifting conditions rapidly.
Creating capacity for higher-value work
AI’s value is not just efficiency. Automating routine work frees employees to increasingly focus on tasks that need human judgment and customer insights: decisions that truly move the business forward.
This raises the bar on readiness. Retailers need people who can partner with intelligent systems, critically assess AI-generated recommendations, and apply judgment where context matters the most, all backed by governance that keeps things transparent, accountable, and aligned with organisational goals.
Preparing for the future of retail work
Retailers are increasingly blending human expertise with machine intelligence, and as agentic capabilities get built deeper into enterprise systems, the role of AI in evaluating and executing decisions will grow. Retail leaders who want to get ahead of this shift should focus on building workforce readiness and scalable AI factories: the foundations that a genuinely hybrid workforce will be built on.