2026 RTIH Innovation Awards Technology Implementation of the Year (Rest of World) finalists announced
We’re pleased to announce the shortlist for the 2026 RTIH Innovation Awards Technology Implementation of the Year (Rest of World) 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 Technology Implementation of the Year (Rest of World) finalists as follows:
Davines and Attensi
Davines and Attensi transformed launch readiness from locally delivered, inconsistently measured training into a scalable global sales-enablement capability.
For the Beautiful Things launch, game-based simulations gave Davines’ international sales community repeated, practical product practice, while a jointly developed evaluation framework connected engagement with sales performance.
Despite being voluntary and spanning employees and independent distributors, the programme achieved 74% participation and 56% completion; four of six direct sales countries reached 100% for both. Learners training for more than 30 minutes recorded higher median sales, with analysis identifying a potential €320,000 uplift. The programme has since expanded into additional launches and capability building initiatives.
EDEKA and GEBOS
EDEKA, Germany's largest food retailer, is a cooperative of around 3,200 independent retailers and seven regional companies, with a highly diverse store estate.
Driven by moving over half of its checkouts from Windows to Linux, GEBOS, GEBIT's InStore Operating System, has been in production in every regional company since September 2026, in company owned and independent stores alike. More than 900 PoS and back-end devices are managed from one central platform, in a single tenant, across all regions.
Results: PoS and server hardware from nine manufacturers, new devices checkout ready in under 30 minutes, 99% on the current release.
Fynd
A leading quick service restaurant operator set out to run its entire business across web, app and kiosk on one engine that keeps meal deals, pricing, localisation and loyalty consistent everywhere.
Partnering with Fynd, it rebuilt the experience on a single platform covering bundling, localisation, a central catalogue, loyalty, promotions, new ordering formats and multilingual AI support. Since going fully live on Fynd Commerce, daily orders have grown a sustained 7.0% over the pre-Fynd baseline, holding up across the period rather than for a single week.
GEN-Y Hitch and Patchworks
GEN-Y Hitch makes premium towing and mobility accessories and sells to both retail customers and wholesale dealers. Its heavily customised WooCommerce site carried high technical debt, and script-based links to NetSuite caused data gaps, inventory variances and delayed fulfilment updates.
With implementation partner Shero Commerce, GEN-Y moved to Shopify for D2C and B2B (via SparkLayer), with Patchworks as the integration layer to NetSuite. Patchworks automates SKU and variant alignment, real-time stock sync and order routing. The results: 75% year-on-year revenue growth, 36% lower total cost of ownership, a 100% Core Web Vitals pass rate and fully automated ERP sync.
Noken and nsign
FLO·W Experience is an immersive technology implementation delivered by nsign Managed Solutions for Noken, the bathroom brand of Porcelanosa Grupo.
Installed at Noken’s showroom in Vila-real, Spain, it transforms the future bathroom from a concept into a live, personalised journey for professional visitors. nsign served as AV integrator, hardware supplier and installer, deploying its CMS and media players as the content orchestration layer connecting NFC identification, sensors and Loxone automation.
Pharma&Go and Sensei
Pharma&GO is a 100% autonomous health and wellbeing store in Lisbon, open 24/7 with no staff on site. Opened in November 2025 opposite Hospital CUF Descobertas, it was delivered by Pharma&GO with Glintt Life and technology partner Sensei.
Customers check in with a bank card, pick up products and walk out; payment is automatic. Computer vision and in-shelf scales track every item in real time, with anonymous processing and no facial recognition. In its first three months the 70 m² store recorded more than 7,200 visits, averaging three minutes each, and proved a model for hybrid pharmacies.
Quorso
Quorso is an AI powered intelligent management platform for large-format grocery, convenience, apparel, and specialty retailers. It turns fragmented store data into a daily set of actions store teams can actually take.
Rather than another dashboard, Quorso identifies the highest impact opportunity in every store, every day, and delivers it as a specific mission with a clear reason and a measurable outcome. In the last three months alone, store teams completed more than 800,000 missions across sales, inventory and shrink, people and operations.
TCS
A leading European grocery retailer faced growing business constraints from a legacy integration landscape that was expensive to maintain, difficult to scale, and slowing digital transformation efforts. TCS EventForge introduced an AI powered modernisation approach that rapidly converts legacy integrations into a modern, real-time operating model. The initiative reduced dependency on specialist resources, accelerated transformation timelines, and enabled a phased, low risk migration strategy.
With live deployments in production, EventForge is helping the retailer modernise faster, improve operational agility, and unlock significant cost savings while building a future ready foundation for innovation and growth.
