By PartnerTalks | Sponsored by Evenica
Retail inventory distortion, the combined effect of out-of-stocks and overstocks, cost retailers $1.7 trillion in 2024, according to research from retail analytics firm IHL Group.
Partner-to-Partner collaboration, Evenica argues, can help alleviate the strain.
As retailers automate pricing, purchasing, and allocation decisions within modern commerce platforms, Volume 142 of Data & Knowledge Engineering reports that implementation failures increasingly stem from how operational workflows are configured rather than from software defects themselves.
At a 2024 MSDW Dynamics 365 Commerce panel hosted by Rick McCutcheon and featuring Microsoft representatives, speakers discussed resolving the issue by staffing projects with multiple specialized firms to manage cross-system dependencies.
Retail consultancy Evenica says the shift reflects how Commerce systems function: customer transactions immediately trigger operational actions across inventory, finance, and supply chain processes.
Microsoft requires customers deploying Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations applications to complete a go-live readiness review before production activation. The review validates configuration and technical stability but does not test whether live business behaviour produced by transactions will be operationally correct.
Transactions as operational triggers
Unlike traditional storefront software, Dynamics 365 Commerce connects customer activity directly to back-office workflows.
Store transactions can automatically update prices, allocate stock and generate purchasing actions, Evenica says.
Research by the ECR Retail Loss initiative, conducted with researchers at Cardiff University, reports more than 60 per cent of inventory records contain inaccuracies and correcting them produces measurable sales gains. When operational decisions are automated, those inaccuracies propagate immediately through purchasing and allocation processes rather than being corrected manually later.
In multi-system retail environments, operational issues can surface as ownership disputes rather than software failures. At a Dynamics 365 Commerce panel reported by MSDynamicsWorld, Accenture strategy director Michael Mellegaard said customers “don’t want to have to deal with ‘whose issue is this,’ they just want to get it solved,” describing incidents where multiple vendors must determine responsibility before corrective action occurs.
Gustavo Roland, director of business development at Evenica, said deployments can pass technical validation while still producing incorrect business outcomes.
“When you’re talking about Commerce, we are looking for the holistic understanding, not only from the customer perspective, but the organization in terms of inventory, price, promotions, all this procurement process,” he said.
He said errors can include incorrect pricing, inventory allocation mistakes and automated purchasing triggered unintentionally by customer activity.
Delivery structure and accountability
Customer reviews on Gartner Peer Insights, updated in 2025, describe deployment and learning challenges, while a 2024 Forrester study identifies integration depth and adoption complexity as implementation risks.
Roland said projects increasingly divide responsibilities across firms so each Partner owns a defined operational domain.
“Evenica is primarily a P2P company,” he said, referring to Partner-to-Partner collaboration.
“So we engage with all those Partners that don’t have the commerce practice in place because we understand the way they operate, we understand the dependencies and it’s easier for them to have us as part of the implementation team.”
Meanwhile, The Business Company’s 2026 Multi-Vendor Support Services Market Report states that researchers expect the market to grow from $66.59 billion in 2025 to $88.75 billion in 2030 as e-commerce continues to drive market growth.
A 2024 update to research and advisory firm Gartner’s website advises organizations undertaking complex ERP transformations to collaborate closely with business partners to mitigate implementation risk and align on outcomes.
The approach contrasts with traditional enterprise software delivery in which a single systems integrator holds end-to-end responsibility for the outcome.
The discussion reflects an unresolved delivery question: some teams separate operational domains to isolate failures, while others retain a single accountable integrator to avoid responsibility disputes during incidents.
As Microsoft continues to position Dynamics 365 Commerce within an integrated Finance and Operations ecosystem, the above research demonstrates that implementation risk increasingly centres on how transaction data flows across the broader Microsoft stack. In that context, Roland said Partner-to-Partner delivery models may offer a way to align specialized Commerce, finance and supply chain expertise within a single Microsoft environment, reducing operational blind spots that emerge after go-live.
He argues that, in complex Commerce deployments, delivery outcomes increasingly hinge on coordination across specialized Partners rather than on platform activation alone. Specifically, Partner-to-Partner collaboration, he says, can help reduce Dynamics 365 Commerce implementation risk in complex retail environments.
