Eight years after its high-profile acquisition, e-commerce giant Amazon and organic grocery chain Whole Foods Market continue to face significant technological misalignment, according to an internal Deloitte document reviewed by Business Insider. The review highlights ongoing struggles in merging their Microsoft software ecosystems, creating operational inefficiencies and security concerns.
Deloitte's Six-Point Diagnosis of the Tech Divide
The Deloitte team, working with Whole Foods employees earlier this year, identified six major problem areas hindering seamless collaboration between the two companies. The core issue is a "fragmented" use of Microsoft 365 toolsets at Whole Foods, coupled with loose data security and retention practices.
Firstly, employees are forced to constantly switch between communication apps like Slack and Microsoft Teams based on which Amazon team they are interacting with. This disjointed experience, Deloitte notes, "increases complexity and inefficiency," directly hampering productivity and collaboration.
Secondly, Whole Foods lacks formal company-wide rules for email and document retention, except for limited settings in Teams. This absence of a clear data governance policy makes regulatory compliance and data management across servers significantly harder.
Thirdly, security remains a pressing concern. Several teams expressed a desire to close the gap between Amazon's and Whole Foods' "security postures." Deloitte suggested immediate improvements, including mandating stronger device registration and blocking unverified emails to bolster defenses.
The Cumbersome Reality of Dual Identities and App Sprawl
The fourth problem stems from identity management. Employees currently need to manage both Whole Foods and Amazon accounts, a setup described as "cumbersome" but necessary for basic operations. Whole Foods' Microsoft 365 access is restricted to its own identities and Amazon guest accounts.
Fifth, strict external sharing rules within Microsoft 365, which require approval for any outside access, have backfired. To circumvent these policies, many Whole Foods teams have adopted alternative collaboration tools, creating shadow IT. Consequently, OneDrive sharing has been disabled, and SharePoint security is being tightened.
Finally, the review found Whole Foods currently has 314 registered applications, with regular audits to remove unused ones. However, oversight is limited for apps that send emails using Whole Foods domains, creating a blind spot for email security enhancements.
A 24-Month Phased Plan for Full Integration
To resolve these issues, Deloitte recommended a detailed 24-month integration roadmap. The plan advocates a phased approach, first migrating Whole Foods' corporate employees onto Amazon's backend technology systems, followed by frontline store workers.
Under this strategy, corporate staff would transition to Amazon's email and OneDrive systems early in the process. More complex platforms like SharePoint and Teams would be migrated gradually, allowing time to test and fine-tune permissions for both sets of user identities. The end goal is to consolidate all workloads under Amazon's umbrella, which would eliminate duplicate software licensing costs and ensure alignment with Amazon's stringent security standards.
Amazon responded to the findings. Spokesperson Jamie Forrest stated the company has a "successful and growing" grocery business serving over 150 million customers. Forrest added that Amazon has continually worked to "simplify ways of working and better collaborate across teams."
"We're bringing our corporate grocery teams closer together with a consistent employee experience, including aligning to the same technology systems and tools, to make it easier to collaborate and innovate on behalf of our customers," Forrest said. The Deloitte document, however, underscores the complex and lengthy journey still required to fully unify these two retail titans eight years after their merger.
