Technology is a tool, not a destination
Genuinely transformative retail technology consultancy rarely jumps straight into talking tech.
Instead, it focuses on business-led conversations about organisational objectives. Only when this picture is clear does it look at how networks, connectivity, cloud and more can help.
This can go against a common belief that leaping to adopt the latest dazzling capabilities will be the ultimate solution.
Yes, they may be impressive and reassure retail leadership that the organisation is at the cutting edge, but unless these decisions are anchored in business outcomes they’re unlikely to deliver actual benefits and value.
What to look for in a retail consultancy pathway
Business-grounded conversations
Expect to invest time in sharing your business strategy, including where you are today and how you’d like to see tomorrow. This process should include giving all your relevant people, from the CEO to the CIO and IT teams, ample opportunity to share and discuss their views with the consultants to make sure they understand your business challenges correctly. These conversations should culminate in clear, agreed-upon business outcomes and guiding programme principles that can be revisited when any key decisions need to be made.
Visible partnership
It’s an overused term, but retail consultancy should be a journey, with a trusted partner who is present in your business throughout. Only by walking your transformation pathway with you can consultants understand the nuances of your experience and immediately nudge progress back on track.
In-depth discovery
Establishing a baseline of your technological estate can be a tough process, but one that accelerates value. Understanding what you physically have in your stores and what connects them and supports them, combined with service management data, surfaces vital insights, such as critical investment priorities and operational inefficiencies.
Detailed retail cost modelling
Prepare to delve into the numbers to co-create a solid view of your technology cost base. This will draw on data you already have, augmented by market data to fill any gaps. Best-value retail consultancy will also consider technical debt, including a risk-based assessment of technology areas that can be left untouched and those that absolutely must be updated.
Future architecture recommendations
Often expected almost immediately in the consultancy process, these should only come after the discussions establishing busines objectives, parameters and current baseline. This means recommendations can maximise the value of what you’ve got and should involve rigorously testing the proposed architecture against retail business outcomes.
Robust business case
The transition to your future architecture must be affordable for your retail business; it’s too easy for recommendations to burst the cost envelope. Value-centred, realistic retail consultancy will generate a technology or service transformation road map, broken down into stages and then model future expenses for each period, to avoid financially damaging your business.
Delivery credentials
A transformative plan can appear perfect before implementation, and if the retail consultancy engagement ends at this point, the consultants can leave with the retailer’s thanks ringing in their ears. However, what looks ideal conceptually may not translate so easily into practice. Retail consultancy engagements that include implementation and in-life support often generate strategies that are more pragmatic, detailed and effective on the ground.
Retail consultancy that delivers results
As a market-leading retailer with over 400 retail stores and a strong heritage of supporting hundreds of retailers with their technology needs, we have firsthand experience of the challenges facing UK retail today.
We also bring a global track record of helping organisations across all industries build their future strategies with confidence.
Our network and security credentials are unparalleled, and our reputation for reliability, resilience and risk mitigation has been earned through decades of working as part of critical national infrastructure, connecting emergency services and supporting defence capabilities.
Our partnership approach removes complexity wherever possible and manages the risks and costs of change so you can build a network fit for the future.
© BT 2025
© BT 2025