Retailers are Sitting on Back-to-School Gold—If They Can Unlock Their Data

When Retailers Fly Blind During Back-to-School  

Back-to-school season is the second-biggest retail event of the year, and one of the most competitive. According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), total back-to-school spending was expected to reach $38.8 billion in 2024, the second-highest figure on record after last year’s $41.5 billion.

Despite the event’s annual significance, retailers are making some of their most critical seasonal decisions while flying blind. Critical real-time insights, such as customer buying behavior, inventory movement, and supply chain logistics, are often trapped in core systems or fragmented across environments in unstructured formats. The result? Slow decisions, missed opportunities, and disconnected experiences during one of the most competitive retail windows of the year.  

But it doesn’t have to be that way. With back-to-school season in full swing, it’s the perfect time for retailers to unlock even more value from their data by unifying, accessing, and acting on it through modernization.

Modernization in Place  

Modernization doesn’t have to mean starting from scratch. 79% of IT executives view the mainframe as essential for powering AI-driven innovation and value creation, according to a recent IBM survey. That’s why modernizing in place, enabling existing infrastructure to integrate seamlessly with cloud platforms, analytics tools, and digital storefronts, lets retailers evolve without disruption. This approach opens the door to:  

• Uncovering hidden data islands that hold untapped business value  

• Unifying operational data across environments into a single, real-time view  

Read on to explore how discovering and activating your data forms the foundation for a more innovative, more agile back-to-school strategy  

Discover Hidden Data Islands: Know What You’re Missing  

Once systems are connected, the next step is knowing what data you have and what’s still untapped.  

Rocket Software’s 2024 Rethinking the Role of Mainframe Data in Enterprise AI and Analytics survey found that just 28% of organizations extensively use data from their core systems in data-driven initiative. For retailers, begin with a comprehensive data discovery process:  

• Identify both structured (POS logs, vendor timelines) and unstructured sources (purchase orders, PDFs, scanned forms)  
• Map where data resides, how it’s accessed, and by whom  
• Evaluate technical or regulatory barriers to availability  

By surfacing these isolated “data islands,” retailers can create a connected foundation for smarter, faster retail decisions. Hybrid approaches make it possible to enrich existing infrastructure instead of discarding it, turning what was once invisible into a competitive asset.  

Act on a Single View: Drive Forecasting, Inventory & Personalization  

Still, knowing what data exists isn’t enough. The real challenge, according to 76% of IT decision-makers, is accessing, contextualizing and acting on it due to integration and tooling gaps.  

For retailers during back-to-school season, those capabilities are paramount. Thankfully, a hybrid data architecture can address this by merging transactional data from core systems with cloud-native platforms, edge devices, and content tools into a single, governed, real-time view.  

Picture a centralized dashboard that overlays historical sales data from core systems with real-time signals across the business. With this consolidated intelligence, retailers can:  

• Predict stockouts before they happen  
• Run AI-driven demand forecasting  
• Tailor promotions based on real-time buying behavior  
• Align merchandising, marketing, and operations around shared insight  

In a high-pressure season like back-to-school, a unified view is the difference between seizing the season or scrambling to catch up.  

The Bottom Line: Meet Modernization Where You Are  

Rocket Software empowers retailers to modernize without disruption, unlocking the full value of their core systems through hybrid strategies that bridge today’s needs with tomorrow’s goals.