EY’s high-flying consulting practice is stepping into another new market by launching a set of IT advisory services focused on the Microsoft Cloud for Retail software offering.

EY’s consulting practice delivered revenues of $13.9 billion last year after growing 27.1% in 12 months. A significant percentage of the practice’s revenue comes from advising large corporations on IT projects like software rollouts.

Microsoft Cloud for Retail is a large bundle of Microsoft products that includes familiar applications like Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams. Layered atop these core components are custom software features meant to make the organizational clockwork of brick-and-mortar retailers operate more smoothly.

EY is now bundling Microsoft Cloud for Retail with its IT consulting offerings in an easy-to-consume package targeted at big companies.

EY is positioning its offering as a soup-to-nuts solution. Clients get assistance with not only setting up Microsoft Cloud for Retail but also the many other steps involved in such software implementation projects, starting with the initial planning stage.

EY hosts ideation sessions where a company’s executives can create the back-of-the-envelope vision for rolling out Microsoft’s retail software bundle. Then, EY can draw up a plan for sorting out the technical and budgetary details should be sorted out.

EY is throwing in its field-tested templates and procedures to sweeten the deal. Those templates can increase the chance of Microsoft Cloud for Retail rollout projects completing on budget, which is not a given in any large-scale enterprise software project.

Microsoft Cloud for Retail is the kind of expensive, everything-included software product that big companies favor because it can address many different business units’ needs all at once. The list of built-in features is extensive.

Microsoft Cloud for Retailers can show how a store’s layout should be designed to maximize sales. It can also uncover bottlenecks in a company’s supply chain, identify customers at risk of switching to a competitor and optimize ad performance.

“Leveraging Microsoft’s leading technologies and combined with EY teams’ services for implementation support, retailers will be able to better understand their customers, provide an exceptional experience and drive sustainable value,” remarked Ricardo Enrico Jahn, the head of Microsoft consulting at EY’s affiliate in Germany.

EY is not the only major consultancy that works with Microsoft customers to implement the software. Top EY rival Accenture, which ranks as the world’s largest professional services firm by revenue, likewise takes on Microsoft Cloud for Retail implementation projects as part of its client work. 

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