Channel your innovation: Why IT partnerships are essential for the future of retail

Social media has created a whole new universe for consumers to discover, shop, and share the brands they love. And this new world has sparked an often-overwhelming range of opportunities for today’s retailers, who want to keep up with comments sections, develop AI chatbot solutions, and provide personalized experiences.

As such, it’s no surprise that enterprise IT spending in the retail market is expected to increase by 5.9% this year, to $209.3 billion. But it’s not just about spending. The road to smoother shopping experiences is paved with broken attempts at implementation with overly complex, costly technologies.

Indeed, many retailers are looking to take a more measured, strategic approach to their IT investments, ensuring they make the right moves and partnerships at the right time. So, for channel partners in this space, the pressure is rising to show their value.

With the retail landscape continuing to evolve so rapidly, relationships and expertise remain indispensable. IT channel partners must be crucial allies, enabling brands to navigate the complex technical challenges holding them back. They are the backbone behind the future of retail systems across Point of Sale, inventory management, supply chain logistics, and more.

Retailers aren’t just seeking products. They want long-term strategic advisers and allies that can bring their business goals to life.

Focusing on relationships and outcomes

Products cannot be plastered onto the challenges that many businesses are facing today. Retailers need a range of outcomes: seamless omnichannel experiences, agile supply chains, real-time inventory visibility, and AI-powered personalisation that enhances the customer journey. And no single vendor can solve or provide everything.

Nurturing relationships where partners give customers end-to-end expert counsel is crucial. The best partners think beyond just their portfolio. They ask: What does success look like for this customer? What gaps exist in getting them what they want? How can new and existing systems be integrated?

This requires a partnership that extends beyond the core services a vendor offers. The relationship and the outcome matter more than any individual sale. This is what strengthens the partnerships in the channel ecosystem.

Understanding differentiation in a hesitant market

Despite projected growth for the coming year, trade policy changes and geopolitical volatility have created multiple different realities for retailers depending on their location and products. As such, many channel partners are experiencing project delays and ingrained market hesitation that has led to increased competition.

Diversification isn't differentiation. What will set partners apart is their depth of expertise and the tangible value they bring. Retailers need partners who understand their specific challenges, whether it’s optimizing inventory visibility across distributed order management systems, orchestrating complex supply chain delays, or managing their workforce during uncertainty.

Those who can truly grasp these operational realities can help articulate a clear path forward for customers.

Committing to quality over quantity

In the channel industry, breadth can sometimes sacrifice quality. Fewer, deeper relationships are better than an abundance of shallow ones - especially to nurture valuable long-term collaboration.

When organizations commit to select channel partners and invest intensively, shared expertise develops. Partners should implement feedback loops as the basis of this development, looking to build trust on both sides and promote honest conversations. Committing to frequent, multi-level engagement across geographies is also an important basis for how to enable mutual success.

It requires discipline for this type of quality relationship to work. For vendors, that means saying no to partnerships that spread resources thin with little reward. For channel partners, it means being selective. The result is a resilient ecosystem that is capable of tackling the industry’s toughest obstacles.

Deepening partnership where it matters

AI momentum in retail will continue to grow in the years to come. Already, more than 35% of executives are using it in areas such as online customer service, image creation, copywriting, consumer search, or product discovery. Yet for many retailers, the skills to implement AI well can be the one thing they struggle with most. This is where channel partners with AI expertise have a significant advantage.

Good AI strategies require quality data, integration, change management, and optimisation. Successful implementations involve partners taking a pragmatic approach that brings specific, high-value use cases to retail. Partners need to be the ones who enable retailers to identify how to execute this well, and step by step, over time.

Building for the long term

Deeply invested channel partners quickly become authentic advocates, with every integration increasing reach and demand. Strong channel partnerships are one of the most important avenues for organic, credible brand amplification. When a trusted systems integrator recommends a solution based on real experiences, it carries weight that nothing else can match.

This is the ecosystem that will help retailers navigate a changing landscape, driven by a shared commitment to solve new challenges and share in the success. It is this philosophy of shared wins that underpins the most resilient environments in retail.