Retailers already watch the obvious numbers. Things like margins, labor costs, inventory turns and sales performance. But when it comes to productivity, retailers often miss the mundane processes that quietly build operational friction.
It shows up in small ways: manual handoffs, duplicate tasks, disconnected systems, approval delays and everyday workarounds slow teams down. That friction is costly for smaller retailers. Every status check, system toggle and rekeyed form pulls employees away from the customer-facing work that protects loyalty and revenue.
Fix the Work First
At first, you might think fixing productivity means prioritizing workforce improvements. It’s why retailers provide employees with simple automation tools, but that rarely fixes the underlying issue. The work was not designed efficiently in the first place.
Work optimization starts with how tasks move across employees, systems and decisions. Where does a request stall? Why is the same information entered twice? Which tasks could be handled before an employee ever has to step in? Once those friction points are visible, retailers can design the workflow around a practical mix of human, robotic and agentic workers.
Employees will always be essential for judgment, empathy and customer relationships. Robotic workers can take on repetitive, rules-based tasks such as data entry or form processing. Agentic workers can review information, coordinate next steps across systems and make recommendations within clear guardrails. The goal is to better support human workers with digital workers.
When intelligent automation absorbs low-value administrative work, employees get more time for the decisions and conversations only people can handle.
Start with One Messy Workflow
Total work optimization may seem daunting. Completely transforming how your business works can be intimidating. The best way to start is with one workflow that you know is causing operational friction. Map where the work slows down, then use a mixture of robotic and agentic workers to own the steps that should never have required employee attention in the first place.
Retailers do not need a massive technology project to modernize operations. They need a clearer view of where time is being lost and a disciplined way to fix it, workflow by workflow.
Operational friction may not appear as obviously as other issues; it shows up as employee frustration and inefficiency. Retailers can transform how work gets done in ways that have never been possible before. Orchestrating a workforce of humans, robots and agents is the future of work. But to set the workforce up for success, retailers need to evaluate and optimize the work itself.
Todd Michaud is the president and CEO at HuLoop.
