Panda Retail Company is one of the largest retail chains in the Middle East, serving over 100 million customers annually. Headquartered in Saudi Arabia, the company operates more than 209 stores across 43 cities, supported by four major distribution centers.

To stay flexible and competitive in a fast-moving retail landscape, Panda set out to modernize its merchandising core systems and transition to a future-ready, cloud-based platform that could evolve quickly to meet rising customer expectations and changing market dynamics.

In Q2 of 2024, Panda sought a partner to lead its transformation initiative centered on a retail platform that would:

• Remain continuously up to date with the latest features and security patches
• Integrate seamlessly with the company’s existing stack of 180+ integrations, including third-party applications (e.g., forecasting, warehouse management, POS, store inventory) and proprietary platforms
• Comply with national data residency requirements mandating all data to be stored and processed locally
• Could be deployed with minimal disruption to business operations

At the time, Logic, Part of Accenture was already providing Level 1/2/3 monitoring and support for Panda’s Oracle Retail and associated applications. Panda engaged Logic to conduct a comprehensive assessment of its current systems and identify opportunities for modernization, with an emphasis on both technical feasibility and business process improvement.

In October 2024, Panda selected Logic as its partner to lead this critical digital transformation. “We chose Logic for their strong reputation with a mix of deep retail experience and tech expertise. Our previous engagement gave us confidence in their ability to help us achieve greater customer centricity through digital transformation,” said Junaid Alam, Panda’s IT Services Senior Manager. “Logic’s pre-packaged accelerators, methodology allowed us to seamlessly and rapidly migrate our merchandising capabilities to a modernized technological Platform called Next Generation.”

“Logic has set us up for continued success, aligned to our goals of operational excellence, sustainable growth and innovation for years—if not decades—to come.”

—Junaid Alam, IT Services Senior Manager, Panda

Solution

Over the next eight months, Logic led the implementation of the latest Oracle Retail offering, delivering a modernized, cloud-based merchandising core tailored to Panda’s operational and regulatory requirements.

Logic managed the program, working closely with Oracle and Panda stakeholders to ensure a smooth and future-ready transformation. Key elements of the engagement included:

• Architecture and deployment planning: Logic defined the overall system architecture, infrastructure requirements, and deployment strategies for the new Oracle Retail SaaS and PaaS environment and applications across approximately 40 separate servers.
• Integration design and re-development: Logic re-developed and revalidated more than 180 integrations across Panda’s complex ecosystem of third-party and proprietary systems ensuring seamless data flows between real-time and batch processes with robust error handling.
• Testing: The team supported end-to-end testing efforts and cutover strategy to minimize business disruption during go-live.
• Risk management and stakeholder alignment: Logic maintained ongoing alignment with business and technical stakeholders, delivering regular steering updates, risk assessments, and mitigation planning throughout the program lifecycle.
• Knowledge transfer and long-term readiness: As part of the engagement, Logic ensured that Panda’s internal teams and Logic managed services team were equipped for long-term success through detailed documentation, training, and knowledge transfer activities.

The entire project was completed in a matter of months with little to no operational disruptions and brought Panda’s systems fully in compliance with data requirements. “Logic helped us make this major transition in a short period of time, without disrupting our retail business team’s activities,” explained Saleh Jamal, Director of Change Delivery. “Logic has set us up for continued success, aligned to our goals of operational excellence, sustainable growth and innovation for years—if not decades—to come.”

Results

Panda’s transformation initiative, led by Logic, delivered a series of strategic and technical milestones that set a new standard for Oracle Retail modernization in the region—and globally.

✓   Strategic Results and Business Improvements: Oracle Retail v25 allows commercial and merchandising teams to react more quickly to market trends and supplier opportunities. The latest version of Oracle Retail also Improved data accuracy and real-time visibility, strengthening decision-making across forecasting, replenishment, and supply chain operations.

✓   Set a new global benchmark: Panda became the first company worldwide to successfully upgrade to Oracle Retail v25, leveraging the new Merch API with Webhook technology to enable more responsive and event-driven operations.

✓   Modernized integrations across the enterprise: Logic rebuilt and standardized Panda’s integration catalog, connecting more than 10 core systems with modern, cloud-ready architecture—ensuring long-term scalability and maintainability.

✓   Comprehensive migration of infrastructure: The team migrated approximately 40 PaaS servers across all environments, covering both application and database layers.

✓   Seamless deployment of mission-critical services: The migration encompassed a wide range of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) components and essential retail applications—including six key Micro Apps (such as the Supplier Portal), the on-prem Store Inventory Management (SIM) system, Oracle Data Integrator (ODI), Oracle GoldenGate Microservices, Application Gateway, Oracle BI Publisher (spanning more than 100 reports), and Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC) instances.

✓   Strengthened multi-party collaboration: The engagement enhanced coordination between Panda, Oracle, and Logic—laying the foundation for a scalable, supportable, and future-ready Oracle Retail cloud environment.

With the new merchandising core in place, it will be far easier for Panda to evolve their infrastructure moving forward. The company is continuing to work with Logic on its digital transformation across its digital footprint.