Retail’s eCommerce channel has become a shining star in an otherwise dismal retail season. While the National Retail Federation projects overall retail sales growth to be 3.5% in 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that eCommerce sales will rise over 17% in the same period, and over 70% in the next five years.

However, while retailers have made progress in aligning customer service processes with evolving consumer shopping patterns, Retail Systems Research’s (RSR) latest study shows that even retail winners (those that outperform their peers in year-over-year sales) fear their information systems stand as the biggest barrier to future improvements. With retail performance increasingly dependent on the inter-play between stores and online, such barriers threaten both retailer results and the meteoric growth of the online channel.

This study finds that retailers have made significant progress in integrating the processes that support multi-channel sales by more closely aligning purchasing and fulfillment across channels. But even while the web continues to flourish as the fastest growing channel, most retailers remain concerned that redundant processes and unintegrated systems will drive up their costs as the volume of non-store sales increases.