Consumer products & retail

Strategic Information Technology

IT driven top-line growth
For consumer and retail businesses, information technology is recognized as a key driver for revenue growth. The development of new market segments, new products/services, and new customers can be accelerated through IT. In many cases, IT is the innovation—as with digital products, digital features, and digital services. A.T. Kearney works with consumer and retail clients around the world to develop IT strategies and implement innovative IT approaches to drive growth. Examples include developing a multi-channel retail strategy for an international office supply company, optimizing the effectiveness of the sales force and geographical expansion of one of the world's largest beverage companies with a new global CRM strategy, and optimizing a leading retailer's product portfolio mix by leveraging their merchandise management system.

IT enabled business process efficiency
IT is a critical enabler facilitating the next wave of business transformation. Beyond simple automation, the strategic application of IT to core business processes, such as supply chain, can create new capabilities and breakthrough competitive advantage. A.T. Kearney's capabilities blend our technical and functional expertise. We have a long history of streamlining business processes, especially across organizational silos. IT is integral to sustaining these improvements for consumer and retail clients by leveraging merchandise management systems, supply chain logistics, back-office functions, and management reporting.

IT strategy and transformation
Business challenges and opportunities for IT continue to advance rapidly, but the IT organization's strategies, operating models, and asset portfolios are too often slow to respond and difficult to change. A.T. Kearney helps clients develop the vision, strategies, and roadmaps to keep IT on the cutting-edge and at the leadership table. For example, we helped a leading department store chain developing a ten-year IT strategy to proactively address their business needs, including strategies for client interactions, global IT governance, future systems landscape, and decision support for the right mix of internal and external IT expertise.

Enterprise transformation
Large-scale business events (such as a merger or complexity reduction) require a comprehensive enterprise-wide program – with IT in a leadership role. A.T. Kearney works with clients on such cross-functional, cross-process programs to help them succeed through IT’s leadership in enabling and integrating all the component parts. We enable companies to quickly run their large IT carve-out or IT post-merger program, without business interruption, while delivering substantial synergies.