POS Procurement Advisory / Major Retailers / From Brief to Installation

Stan & Ollie Productions POS Procurement Advisory

Most retailers have a multi-million pound savings opportunity in their POS spend.

Most don't know it's there. We find it.

Book a 45-minute diagnostic call What We Do ↓

£6M+

Savings per engagement — typical major supermarket

20–30%

Typical POS cost reduction achievable

80–120×

Return on Discovery fee

£50k

Fixed Discovery fee + VAT

The only specialist POS procurement advisory

From brief to installation

Savings banked, not just identified

The Problem

POS Spend Is Retail's Structural Blind Spot

It sits in plain sight — but no single function owns the full picture. That's precisely why it has gone unaddressed.

No Single Owner

POS spend spans marketing, procurement, commercial and store ops. No one function holds the complete picture — so no one is accountable for the total.

Structural Complexity

Supplier relationships, fast-moving seasonal campaigns, and decentralised approval chains mean spend accumulates without systematic review.

Material Scale

For a major retailer, POS can represent tens of millions in annual outlay. Even a 10–15% efficiency improvement is material at board level.

The result: most major retailers are carrying several million pounds of avoidable cost in this category every year — without realising it. It isn't negligence. It's structural.

What We Do

We Map, Quantify, And Deliver The Savings.

Not just a report. It's savings banked. We cover the entire POS operation — from brief to installation.

01
Category Structure & Rationalisation+
Identifying duplication, over-complexity, and misalignment in how your POS category is managed.
02
Supplier Contract & Rate Card Benchmarking+
We know what best-in-class rates look like. We compare your arrangements against the market — in precise detail.
03
End-To-End Process Review+
Brief to installation — the entire POS workflow, identifying where cost accumulates at every stage.
04
POS Spend Diagnostic & Audit+
Full forensic review across all POS categories, cost centres, and supplier relationships.
05
Savings Quantification+
A CFO-grade investment case — sized, prioritised, mapped to your cost structure.
06
Delivery & Implementation+
We work alongside your team to bank savings. We stay until the numbers are real.

What Sets Us Apart

"Our competitors review your supplier contracts. We review your entire POS operation — from brief to installation."

That's why we find cost others don't know to look for. And why our savings figures are consistently larger than anything a conventional advisory delivers.

Our Scope

Twelve areas where savings are hidden.

Most advisories find cost in 2–3 places. We look in 12.

Other advisories typically enter at the supplier contract stage. We start at the trading/marketing brief and don't leave until the POS is on the shop floor.

01Category Structure & Supplier Rationalisation+

Fragmented supplier relationships and duplicated spend categories create avoidable cost. Rationalisation eliminates it without touching the supplier relationships that matter.

02Supplier Rate Cards & Contracts+

The rates agreed two or three years ago are not the rates the market would give you today. We know precisely what best-in-class looks like — and how to close the gap.

03Seasonal Spend & Planning Efficiency+

Last-minute campaign requirements trigger premium pricing. We identify where planning failures are being paid for at supplier day rates and restructure the process.

04Tech & Production Tooling+

Legacy systems and manual processes hide significant labour and rework cost. We evaluate your technology stack and quantify the efficiency gap.

05Marketing & Commercial Briefing Process+

Where campaigns originate and how briefs are structured. Poor briefing generates revision cycles, late changes, and premium production costs. We redesign the process to eliminate downstream cost at source.

06Internal & External Studio Workflows+

Not just what studios cost — but how work flows through them. Utilisation, briefing quality, revision cycles, approval bottlenecks, system integration. We benchmark capacity against output.

07Store Allocation & Estate Management+

Whether the right POS is going to the right stores. Misallocation — too much, too little, wrong format — is a significant and largely unmeasured cost. We quantify and correct it.

08Supplier Funded POS+

Where suppliers contribute to POS costs, we verify whether those agreements are fully utilised, correctly structured, and delivering the value they should.

09POS Delivery To Store+

Logistics and last-mile delivery costs frequently buried in supplier invoices. We surface the true cost and identify where consolidation or renegotiation delivers savings.

10Installation+

On-site installation costs — contractor rates, scheduling, revisits, compliance checking — rarely treated as managed procurement. We benchmark, rationalise, and where appropriate retender.

11Store Estate Auditing+

What's actually installed, what's compliant, what's redundant. The gap between what was ordered and what's on the shop floor is consistently significant — and consistently unaudited.

12Storage Library Costs & Call-Offs+

We audit warehousing arrangements, call-off structures, obsolescence rates, and slow-moving stock that never reaches the shop floor.

Our competitors look at your supplier contracts. We look at your whole operation — every stage from brief to installation.

How We Work

A Structured Three-Phase Engagement Model

Designed to deliver verified results within a single financial year.

Phase 01

Discovery — The "What"

Rapid Diagnostic Of Your Full POS Operation

A forensic review across all twelve cost areas. Delivered as a structured findings debrief with headline savings options.

Within 8 weeks · £50,000 + VAT

Phase 02

Quantification — The "How"

A CFO-Grade Investment Case For Savings

Each savings lever sized, prioritised, and mapped to your cost structure. An investment case your CFO can act on.

Within 2 weeks of debrief

Phase 03

Delivery — The "Who"

Implementation Until Savings Are Real

We work alongside your teams to implement change and bank savings. We stay until the numbers are real.

Bespoke — weekly rate

Our Fee Model

Fixed-Fee Phases

Discovery and Quantification are fixed-fee. The implementation phase is bespoke and charged at a weekly rate dependent on specific scope, agreed before any commitment.

Delivery Without Compromise

Supplier relationships respected. Creative standards upheld. Your control protected.

Results

Outcomes From Completed Engagements. Not Projections.

Client names withheld by agreement. Full methodology available on request.

Engagement 01

Major Grocery Retailer

Scope

Full POS operation review — spend, suppliers, workflows, studio arrangements, storage, delivery, installation, and store allocation across a 500+ store estate

Savings

£6M across four supplier categories

Delivery

Transition completed 7 months after discovery.

Outcome

New supplier seamlessly onboarded, savings banked.

Engagement 02

Major Grocery Retailer

Scope

End-to-end POS process review — procurement, briefing, storage, call-offs, supplier funded POS, and seasonal spend

Savings

£4–6M quantified in Discovery phase

Delivery

Ongoing. First tranche captured in Q1.

Outcome

Investment case adopted by CFO. Delivery phase commenced.

Client names withheld by agreement. Full scope and outcomes available under NDA.

The Emerging Opportunity

What's Next

The Next Frontier: Digital In-Store

The transition to electronic shelf labels, digital six-sheets, and dynamic in-store screens is already underway. The procurement complexity will exceed anything print POS currently presents. Most retailers are treating it as an IT decision. It isn't.

Stan & Ollie are positioned to bring the same forensic rigour to digital in-store — before the inefficiencies become structural.

→
Electronic Shelf Labels (ESL)
Hardware procurement, maintenance contracts, content management, and operational estate management at scale.
→
Digital Six-Sheets & In-Store Screens
Screen procurement, installation, content scheduling, and dynamic creative production costs.
→
Implementation & Rollout
Contractor management, phased rollout planning, compliance and quality assurance at estate scale.
→
Content Production & Workflow
Briefing, production, and approval for dynamic digital content. The same inefficiencies as print, at greater velocity.

If you are planning or already managing a digital POS estate, we would welcome a conversation — before the cost patterns become as entrenched as they are in print.

Start that conversation

About Us

Specialists, Not Generalists.

Stan & Ollie Productions Ltd is the only specialist consultancy focused exclusively on POS procurement efficiency — across the entire operation, from brief to installation.

Adam brings the commercial and marketing strategy lens. Andy brings thirty years of POS category depth. Together they cover both sides of the equation — the investment case and the category intelligence that no generalist firm can replicate.

Adam Kirby

Principal Consultant —
Commercial & Marketing Strategy

→40 Years in marketing communications & production consulting
→8 years as CEO of the world's leading production investment consultancy
→4 years as Global Advertising Category Lead, Diageo
→15 years of major advertising agency leadership
→Senior marketing roles at Nokia and Magners
→Lead consultant on major projects for Mondelez, Beiersdorf/Nivea, Ford and L'Oréal

Andy Dwyer

Principal Consultant —
POS Category & Supplier Intelligence

→30+ years across client and supplier sides of print and marketing production
→POS Procurement Specialist on reviews for two major UK supermarkets
→13 years as Production Director, leading London advertising production company
→Deep specialism in POS, photography, artwork, retouching, and finished print
→Production auditing across IKEA, Boots, adidas, and L'Oréal

80+

Years combined experience

Years as specialist POS advisory

Global

Wherever POS complexity creates opportunity

Common Questions

FAQs

Why can't our internal team do this themselves?+

Your team is highly capable — but POS sits across multiple cost centres and involves supplier relationships that are operationally important day-to-day. No internal team has the bandwidth for a forensic review of this entire operation alongside their existing workload. We bring decades of category expertise plus the independence to challenge pricing in ways that are politically difficult internally.

Will this disrupt our supplier relationships?+

Non-disruptive transitions are our core principle to how we work. Our approach focuses on structural inefficiency, not necessarily replacing suppliers. In engagements to date, service continuity has never been compromised.

How quickly can you deliver a finding?+

Full quantification follows two weeks of debrief. Our deep familiarity with POS cost structures means no lengthy onboarding is required. Quantification follows within two months of starting.

Is this going to take a lot of my team's time?+

Other than the initial document gathering, there is no additional ongoing call on your team's time. We operate independently, with weekly check-ins (or at a cadence, to suit all parties). Stakeholder interviews (a core part of our process) typically take 60 minutes.

What does it cost, and what's the return?+

Discovery is fixed at £50,000 + VAT. In every engagement to date, savings have exceeded that fee by a factor of 80 or more — typically £4–6M against a £50k investment. The implementation phase is bespoke, at a weekly rate agreed before commitment.

How do you handle confidentiality?+

All engagements are under strict NDA from day one. Client names are never disclosed. Case study materials are fully anonymised.

Are you generalist consultants who also cover POS?+

No. POS is all we do — end to end, across all twelve cost areas from brief to installation. Generalist consultants look at supplier contracts. They do not look at briefing processes, store allocation, studio workflows, storage, delivery, and installation. That's where the cost hides.