Find the Secure AI revenue in retail.
A full-day working session for Ingram Micro Microsoft partners. How retailers, consumer brands and online sellers make money, where AI could help, who signs the order, and how to reach them. Included with Cumulus Practice and Executive. £500 per MSP for Community members, up to 2 seats.
Microsoft co-op funding. Subject to eligibility, you may be able to claim back up to 100% of the £500. We give you the invoice and the proof-of-execution paperwork the claim needs. Check with Ingram that you qualify before you rely on it.
You sell the same technology to every industry. You cannot sell the same business case to every industry.
The same Microsoft work sells differently to a retailer than to a manufacturer, because their money is made and lost in different places.
The returns rate in fashion is around 22 per cent. An £18 item and an £180 item then get exactly the same handling: same inspection, same decision, same 33 minutes. Routing returns by what they are worth is the largest single opportunity in the sector, and almost nobody has costed it that way.
Commercial consulting goes deep into one sector. Technology implementation works largely the same way across all of them. Both matter, and they are bought by different people.
They need measurable business outcomes.
They need IT policies and change management.
Secure AI adds a business conversation above the technical one. Neither is better. An MSP needs both, and needs to know which one it is in.
Answers: I already know Microsoft, so why do I need a retail workshop? You already sell across the horizontal. This workshop builds the vertical.
This is how Cumulus reads the sector. It comes from our own model and from interviews with people who run these firms. Treat it as a pattern to test on your own customers, not a fact.
Being brought in after the business decision has already been made.
That decision gets made in a conversation about the customer’s business, not their IT. This workshop is about how to get into that conversation.
We only hear about it when they ask us to quote.
We built exactly what they asked for, but there was no next conversation.
Whoever leads the commercial conversation writes the requirement everybody else quotes against. A requirement written without you leaves you competing inside somebody else’s decision, often on scope and price rather than business value.
Three numbers a retail board watches.
Most technical sales conversations do not begin with these. If yours does, you have a much stronger reason to speak with the people who answer for the economics.
Under £12
What an order earns after cost of goods, delivery, service and returns. On an £80 order this is common, and it shocks people when it is said out loud.
18 to 25%
The returns rate: items sent back as a share of items sold. A fifth is normal in fashion, and most operations handle every one of them identically.
Stock and returns
Stock bought and not sold, plus returns not yet back in stock. Product waiting for someone to write the copy is cash doing nothing, in a season that will not wait.
Five kinds of business. One method.
All five buy or make product and sell it to somebody who can send it back, so one model covers them all. What changes is where the contribution goes.
Which one you are in front of changes the examples, not the method.
Answers: will this cover the retailers I actually sell to? The worked example is multichannel fashion and homeware, because returns hurt most there.
The 4-Step Vertical Business Outcomes System, applied to retail.
One method, applied to a different sector each month.
Know the sector
How retailers make money, the numbers their board watches, and where contribution and cash get lost between the order and the return.
Open the door
The customers you already have, the firms worth targeting, and how to get a meeting with the person who signs. This is not a cold-calling list.
Find the AI opportunity
Where AI could make them more money, free up time, or cut risk. Then how a customer moves through the four steps, starting with a free assessment.
Build the case
How the work should run afterwards, what it is worth, and how to prove it if they ask.
Know the sector → open the door → find the AI opportunity → build the case
Answers: what will the day teach me to do? Sector knowledge, then trusted access, then a customer opportunity, then a commercial case.
Where the opportunity sits in a retailer.
Five places to look. They are not equal, and the biggest one is usually not where you start.
The one worth most is often the one they cannot build yet. Telling them apart is the job.
Answers: where would I actually start? Sizing any of this in a retailer’s own numbers is what the Secure AI Business Case & Process Design does, not the workshop.
Two rules this sector will test you on. Build the case on the peak, never the average. Four to eight weeks carry most of the trade and the returns from them land in January. An annual average gets dismissed by anybody who has worked one. And growth in orders is growth in cost: every extra order brings another possible return, another service contact and another failed delivery. A retailer growing orders while contribution per order falls is getting busier and poorer at once, and saying that out loud is usually the moment the trading director starts listening.
Who you need in the room at the customer.
These vary by sector. In retail they are usually:
Answers for contribution per order
Ask what an order earns after cost of goods, delivery, service and returns. Then ask what a pound of it is worth across their order volume.
Answers for working capital
Knows what sits in stock and in returns not yet resold, and will check your arithmetic before anyone else does.
Decides what shopper data may be used
Order history carries data protection duties. Ask for them by name in the first meeting.
Answers for what a return costs
Knows every return gets the same handling and has rarely been asked to put a number on it. Your best way in.
How MSPs usually get ready for a sector.
All three are sensible. Here is where each one stops being enough.
You get the size of the market and the growth rate.
Your engineers learn the product properly, and usually for free.
You get a list of things AI can do, with examples.
The workshop gives you the part none of them cover. How a retailer makes money, where AI could help, who signs the order, and up to 200 target accounts.
Four things these retailers say.
If you have sold into retail you have heard at least two of them. Each one is contribution per order, and none of them sounds like an AI problem.
An £18 item and an £180 item get exactly the same handling.
January is a month of unpicking December.
We cannot say what each channel makes after fees and returns.
Product sits in the warehouse waiting for someone to write the copy.
Their words beat your list every time. The workshop covers what each one costs, and which of them AI can do something about.
What you leave with on the day.
The five sub-sectors, the three board numbers, and the eight processes that carry the money.
One opportunity packaged into something your team can quote.
Four roles, what each one answers for, and the number each is measured on.
Up to 200 named UK retailers, consumer brands and online sellers, picked to match the kind of business the workshop covers. Enough to start booking meetings.
What to say first, and what to ask before you propose anything.
How to move a customer from a first conversation to an implementation, without asking them to commit early.
Three priced steps, then the build.
The customer only buys the next step if the last one was worth it.
- 1 Secure AI Opportunity Assessment Free. Find where Secure AI could create value.
- 2 Secure AI Business Envisioning Workshop £2,500. One day with the leadership team. Find the business needs, rank the Secure AI opportunities, and agree which one moves forward.
- 3 Secure AI Business Case & Process Design From £15,000. Four to eight weeks. Build the business case, redesign the process and produce the high-level solution design needed to decide on the build.
- 4 Secure AI Implementation Your price. You complete the detailed technical design, then build, deploy and integrate it, and run it for a monthly fee.
One day does not make you a retail consultant. It does let you open the right conversation and work out whether there is a deal in it. If a real opportunity needs deeper work, Cumulus does the commercial side. Your customer stays yours.
Practice and Executive members pay nothing, because this workshop is included. Community members pay £500 per MSP, plus VAT, and that covers two seats.
Eligible partners may be able to use Microsoft co-op funding. Check your eligibility and the claim route with Ingram Micro before you count on the money.
Book your MSP’s place.
Four short steps. Two seats are included, and you can add the second person later.
Ten sectors. One workshop a month. Retail, Consumer Brands & E-Commerce is the tenth.
Book Retail, Consumer Brands & E-Commerce for £500. Or join Cumulus Practice for £3,500 a year and get all ten workshops plus the complete 5P System. Ten workshops bought separately would cost £5,000.
Win the business case before you win the build.