Sector
Retail
“The last few years have been uniquely challenging for the retail industry but reassuringly, the way that we help our clients has remained constant. We are continuing to partner with our retail clients to shape and deliver complex transformational change at a time when the need to respond to market and competitor forces has never been greater.”
Simon Close
Contact Simon
“The last few years have been uniquely challenging for the retail industry but reassuringly, the way that we help our clients has remained constant. We are continuing to partner with our retail clients to shape and deliver complex transformational change at a time when the need to respond to market and competitor forces has never been greater.”
Simon Close
Contact Simon
Retail businesses need to undertake constant change and innovation...
...to beat the competition and meet ever-increasing customer demands. Berkeley’s retail management consultants can help at every stage of the business life cycle, from strategy development to product distribution.
Why do you need retail consulting services?
The changing use of technology has expanded customer expectations, while new competitors are emerging with challenging business models. Retailers must adapt and evolve. This will require major change for most – new markets, evolving business practices, shifting supply chains, new customer offers, challenging investor expectations, and developing and prioritizing different channels.
To excel, retailers need to define ambitious strategies that are deliverable and cost effective. They need to withstand pressure on back office capability and make operations both fit for purpose and efficient – which can be make-or-break for profitability. Some are looking at international expansion and so must reconfigure their operations. Others are contending with excess physical space and have to adapt their usage for the future. Many retailers have no choice but to tackle all these areas at once – and find themselves burdened with too much change and too many interdependencies.
How do you transform successfully without giving up ground? We can help retail businesses take advantage of the opportunities available and overcome the challenges.
Retail consultants who help you achieve sustainability
We can support retail businesses towards becoming more sustainable. By partnering with Berkeley to transform systems and processes, our clients can better audit their supply chain and sourcing, and ensure more ethical trading practices.
Retail consultants who help deliver omnichannel benefits
Berkeley can lead and manage change that turns an omnichannel strategy into tangible business benefits. We can help you maximize operational efficiency and back office capability, and grow your profits as a result. Whatever the challenge, we can partner with you to manage the complex change needed and achieve the strategic outcomes you want.
Retail consultants who enable speed to market
How do you encourage and harness innovative design while also standardizing processes and making stock available quickly? Berkeley’s retail consultants can improve your product lifecycle management practices and processes, enabling a successful bridge between design and the market. We can help with efficient, effective sourcing, optimizing warehouse management systems and develop the right back office and infrastructure services to support your business.
Retail management consulting the Berkeley way
We know that delivering transformational change is particularly challenging in the retail industry. The combination of complex legacy system landscapes, the limited opportunities to implement and embed change around seasonal peaks in trading, and the rapidly changing competitor landscape all put pressure on the change agenda. Our retail management consultants specialize in delivering transformation under the most complex, challenging and high-stakes circumstances.
The Berkeley approach recognizes that buy-in is equally as important as the solution itself. We partner with senior leadership teams to define the right strategy and develop a robust business case. We also help ensure the business reap the rewards by helping track delivery to those key business outcomes.
When shaping and delivering projects, we develop ambitious and sustainable plans and ensure that the appropriate teams are in place to succeed.
We are collaborative, pragmatic and straight talking. With our deep knowledge of the challenges in delivering change in retail, we can make sure the project is set up for success.
Sector
Consumer goods
Sector
Digital economy
Sector
Supply chain and logistics
Well done. A superb job on the most difficult move that we have encountered thus far... probably the hardest move any of us will do in our IT careers. Excellent planning, great process, great team work, great issue resolution and great communications. We are very proud of you."
Group CIO, a retail company
Clients often ask us…
Question 1
How can I move to an omnichannel model quickly without risking empty shelves/stockrooms?
Question 2
How can I manage transformation in such an ever-changing, fast moving sector?
Question 3
How do I mandate sustainable practices?
Question 4
How do I speed up my supply chain without impacting product quality?
Question 5
How do I protect the creativity of my designers while expecting them to ‘fit in’ to a new end-to-end process?
Question 6
How can I quickly take trend analysis and quickly create product to meet demand?
Client stories
A major UK retailer
Working closely with a handful of client staff, in just 16 weeks we were able to challenge some well-established norms of operation, raise the profile of the branches in head office thinking and really explore how best to connect the business to its local community. In so doing, we helped to boost employee engagement and customer satisfaction as well as increasing revenue.
An integrated mobility and CRM solution
One of the world’s largest consumer goods companies was seeking to create a single, integrated mobility and customer relationship management (CRM) solution for use during quality inspection store visits by the retail sales force across Europe.
M&S Direct
Berkeley supported Marks & Spencer in developing a five-year strategy and program of work for its direct-to-consumer business, M&S Direct, in response to a stretch target set by the CEO that called for a five-fold increase in the business over as many years.
A retail organisation
As one of the leading suppliers to the rural community, our client had ambitions to grow. However, their retail strategy was somewhat constrained and not maximizing their full potential. Berkeley were called in to bring a fresh perspective, to review, and where necessary, rewrite the strategy in order to set out a path and plan with greater potential. It was essentially about helping the client identify and craft a bigger ambition while at the same time creating confidence around that ambition.
Client stories
Working closely with a handful of client staff, in just 16 weeks we were able to challenge some well-established norms of operation, raise the profile of the branches in head office thinking and really explore how best to connect the business to its local community. In so doing, we helped to boost employee engagement and customer satisfaction as well as increasing revenue.
One of the world’s largest consumer goods companies was seeking to create a single, integrated mobility and customer relationship management (CRM) solution for use during quality inspection store visits by the retail sales force across Europe.
Berkeley supported Marks & Spencer in developing a five-year strategy and program of work for its direct-to-consumer business, M&S Direct, in response to a stretch target set by the CEO that called for a five-fold increase in the business over as many years.
As one of the leading suppliers to the rural community, our client had ambitions to grow. However, their retail strategy was somewhat constrained and not maximizing their full potential. Berkeley were called in to bring a fresh perspective, to review, and where necessary, rewrite the strategy in order to set out a path and plan with greater potential. It was essentially about helping the client identify and craft a bigger ambition while at the same time creating confidence around that ambition.
