Thriving in today’s competitive environment amidst an environment composed of multiple interacting, interrelated and interdependent components that form a complex, unified and at times chaotic whole; an ever-changing ecosystem that is continuously influenced and impacted by the actions or events associated with customers, associates, suppliers, products, facilities, external ecosystems, etc.; a place where every action or event has the potential to disrupt the customer experience, store operations and risk profile of the environment; and an arena where small events can cascade exponentially and disrupt activity in multiple areas. The retail systems environment contains many variables and those variable can instantly change priorities and threaten the desired business outcomes. To provide the desired customer experience, associate uplift and operational excellence, a balance and harmony must be maintained across all the associates, systems, activities and events which demands a compute paradigm that is aware of the surroundings and that can make decisions and compromises based on an ever-changing situation within ever-shrinking windows of opportunity. Distributed computing that not only can think like a human but also perceive.