If you can’t beat ’em, connect ’em. While brick-and-mortar retailers are by no means headed for imminent extinction, there is also no denying the significant shift in spending toward online sales. A recent survey showed that online shopping grew 14 percent versus a paltry two percent for brick-and-mortar sales in 2016.

This is leading the retail industry to seek new technology solutions that will draw more shoppers and sales. The answer may lie in creating a new experience around the connected consumer. “I hear all the time about this retail apocalypse, that retail is dead,” said Jeff Carlat (pictured, right), senior director of technology solution and strategic alliances at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. “The apocalypse will happen to those brick-and-mortar retailers that don’t digitize and change.”

Carlat visited the set of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and spoke with co-hosts Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Peter Burris (@plburris) at the HPE Discover EU event in Madrid, Spain. He was joined by Kalyan Garimella (pictured, left), “internet of things” manager at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd, and they discussed a joint retail-focused initiative between the two companies and how technology is enabling new ways to gather information and reach shoppers inside the physical store. (* Disclosure below.)

New initiative relies on Aruba

In June, HPE announced a collaborative agreement with Deloitte to provide an IoT solutions offering to improve the consumer shopping experience and strengthen in-store conversion rates. The initiative, which is a combination of Deloitte’s consulting competencies in retail and HPE’s Aruba (enterprise wireless networking), has been branded as “The Connected Consumer” and will be deployed in the first quarter of 2018, according to Carlat.

“Our mantra is you’ve got to think big, start small, and then scale fast,” Carlat said. “We’re making this into an on-ramp for retailers.”

Deloitte has been hearing from its own retail customers about the need for a solution that would appeal to consumers used to a more customized shopping experience when looking for items online. “Mostly, they’re talking about how to mimic their online channels,” Garimella said.

With video analytics and bluetooth connectivity via smartphone, retailers have the ability to understand more fully what is happening during the sales cycle in a physical space. This opens the gates to the promised land of consumer data.

“Store managers in the past have always relied on opinions rather than data and insight to make better business decisions,” Garimella explained. “Now there is technology where we can actually monitor what is happening inside your retail store.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the HPE Discover EU event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the HPE Discover EU event. Neither Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE