Quorso and VoCoVo among 2026 RTIH Innovation Awards Best Retailer/Tech Supplier Relationship finalists
We’re pleased to announce the shortlist for the 2026 RTIH Innovation Awards Best Retailer/Technology Supplier Relationship category. We received a record number of entries this year and many fantastic examples of technology excellence driving transformative change across the global retail sector.
Check out a rundown of our 2026 shortlists and finalists here.
Congratulations to all those who made it through the initial submission process! It’s now over to our star studded judging panel who will decide the winners to be announced at the 2026 RTIH Innovation Awards Ceremony, taking place at The HAC in Central London.
The event will be held on Wednesday, 4th November and consist of a drinks reception, three course meal, awards ceremony presided over by award winning stand-up comedian, presenter, actor and broadcaster, Aurie Styla, and after party until 1am.
Click here to book your place at the 2026 RTIH Innovation Awards Ceremony on Wednesday, 4th November.
Our 2026 Best Retailer/Technology Supplier Relationship finalists as follows:
Asda and Evolve
Evolve is a high growth tech company powering connectivity across more than 10,000 sites for some of the UK’s biggest multi-site brands, including Home Bargains, Pret A Manger and Asda.
Most managed network providers rely on single carrier, generic network designs and reactive support which leaves businesses exposed when outages occur. Evolve challenges this with a carrier-agnostic model that draws on ten alternative providers to ensure speed, resilience and reliability. Its UK-based, round the clock support and nationwide field engineering team deliver a proactive and preventative approach, with 86% of connectivity problems identified before customers experience an issue.
Asda and Deliverect
Deliverect has partnered with Asda Express to simplify on-demand retail operations across its estate, consolidating separate Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Just Eat picking workflows into one unified application.
Rolled out across the Asda Express estate, the technology gives store teams a single process for managing and picking marketplace orders, reducing operational complexity while significantly improving product availability and picking accuracy. The simpler experience has also driven improved staff NPS. Beyond operational efficiency, the initiative provides the technology infrastructure underpinning Asda Express's q-commerce success, creating a scalable ecosystem where additional digital channels and capabilities can be introduced easily as and when required.
cardfactory, Retail Response and Flooid
cardfactory, Flooid and Retail Response have built a trusted technology partnership spanning almost a decade. Over the past 12 months, this relationship has strengthened through two complex, estate wide technology programmes.
Flooid provided cardfactory with a modernised PoS platform supporting its long-term strategy for personalised customer engagement, streamlined journeys and future omnichannel capabilities. Retail Response delivered the nationwide implementation, visiting over 1100 stores twice, over two eight-week spans, to deploy the new PoS and subsequently the integrated payments solution.
The partnership extends into long-term support, combining Flooid’s service desk with Retail Response’s field engineering and logistics capabilities to provide cardfactory with a joined-up, resilient technology service.
Dunelm and VoCoVo
Since 2019, Dunelm and VoCoVo have built a collaborative partnership that has evolved from improving in-store communication to driving a digitally-led transformation across almost 200 stores. Initially replacing inefficient walkie talkies, facilitating fluid communication, and improving colleague safety, the relationship between Dunelm and VoCoVo has grown to support operational changes.
Within the last 12 months, Dunelm has begun upgrading to VoCoVo’s Series 5 Pro Headsets, creating a connected operational platform that directly addresses core retail challenges. This upgrade has enhanced day-to-day reliability while unlocking AI powered features and real-time operational alerts that change the way colleagues handle and respond to customer queries.
East of England Co-op and Transaction Network Services (TNS)
East of England Co-op engaged Transaction Network Services (TNS) after experiencing fragmented service and slow responsiveness from its previous network provider. The resulting partnership has delivered a fully managed TNS Secure SD-WAN platform across more than 200 sites; the technology delivered results, but the strong relationship between TNS and its customer made the difference.
Named account management, dedicated project leadership and proactive communication replaced a multi-divisional provider experience with one accountable team. Through a close and trusted supplier relationship, East of England Co-op benefits from a partner that understands its business, communicates proactively and provides consistent, human support, underpinning confidence in both daily operations and long-term growth.
H&M and TCS
H&M partnered with TCS to redesign retail operations around an AI first, predictive model that reshapes operations beyond traditional monitoring. The solution combines unified data, contextual intelligence and agentic automation to make operations smarter and business-aware across stores, supply chain and production.
Operating across 4,200 stores in 79 markets, Agentic AI acts as first responder, detecting anomalies, assessing business impact and enabling proactive action, delivering reduced major incidents, improved BOPIS performance, stabilised peak trading and cost savings, showing how emerging technologies can move beyond pilots to deliver scalable, real‑world value across omnichannel retail, accelerating organisation towards Brand Plan goals.
Matalan and Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions
Matalan and Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions partnered to transform the retailer's in-store technology estate and create a platform for future omnichannel innovation. Following a six-month RFP process, the organisations evolved a long-standing supplier relationship into a strategic partnership focused on customer convenience, colleague experience and operational agility.
Together, they deployed Toshiba's VisualStore Commerce Platform and upgraded 1,648 tills across 217 stores. The initiative increased Express Checkout adoption, improved reliability and accelerated innovation. It also established a scalable foundation for future loyalty, personalisation and omnichannel capabilities that will support Matalan's long-term transformation ambitions.
The Fresh Market and Vusion
The Fresh Market and Vusion continue to build a strategic partnership that extends well beyond technology deployment. Together, the companies are transforming The Fresh Market’s stores into connected retail environments that improve pricing accuracy, shelf visibility, associate workflows and guest experience.
The relationship began with a major Connected Store roll-out across The Fresh Market’s US store fleet, including electronic shelf labels, VusionCloud, Captana Computer Vision & AI and Memory Store Analytics, marking the first Vusion 360 rollout in North America. Since then, the partnership evolved into a deeper collaboration focused on operational design, associate adoption, measurable performance improvement and public education around how connected store technology can support hospitality led grocery retail.
TRIP and GoPlaces
TRIP was the number one drinks brand on TikTok Shop in 2025. GoPlaces believes that achievement was a result of a brand and its agency that stopped behaving like client and agency. TRIP shared commercially sensitive performance history and worked alongside its engineers; we built technology, OnePlace, around the problems that data exposed and ran a professional LIVE commerce operation on top.
The predictive creator scoring engine now serving 22 brands exists because TRIP went first. In 90 days ROAS rose 57% and wasted media fell 42%. Over 12 months, TRIP outsold Heineken in Dry January. This is the commercial impact of a partnership that built the product.
Yours Clothing and Poq
Yours Clothing and poq’s partnership has gone from strength to strength since 2018, with the last 12 months being the most ambitious yet. Building on a group wide roll-out that already spans M&Co, Evans, Bad Rhino, Long Tall Sally and Pixie Girl, the partnership has now gone global.
As the first phase of international expansion, the Yours Clothing app has taken a proven UK model into new markets, currencies and languages for the first time, with more to come. Rather than slowing as the group has grown, the relationship has sped up: each new market launch draws on lessons from the last, with poq and Yours Clothing's teams working from a shared, evolving playbook rather than starting from scratch each time.
