How did Comcast Transform Planning Across Business Units?

Three years ago, after attending a conference focused on AI, machine learning, and control towers, Sam McCartt, Vice President of Supply Chain Planning at Comcast returned to the office and was immediately confronted with a stark reality. A failed pivot table had disrupted production scheduling; an ordinary issue that exposed a much deeper problem.

“I had this moment where I thought: how do we get from a pivot table failure to control tower?” she recalled.
That moment became the catalyst for a full-scale transformation of Comcast’s supply chain. With operations spanning broadband equipment, mobile devices, and the construction materials needed to maintain a vast national network, the company faced rising complexity and performance expectations. Incremental fixes were no longer enough. What was needed was a fundamental shift in how planning was structured, executed, and enabled by technology.

Nearly three years later, Comcast has moved from fragmented, Excel-based processes to an integrated, AI-powered planning platform. The transformation has delivered significant cost savings, improved service levels, and boosted employee engagement—all without increasing headcount.

At the Gartner Supply Chain Symposium in Orlando, Florida, Sam shared how the company led this transformation across multiple business units, replacing manual processes with intelligent planning and delivering measurable impact at scale.

Transformation Scope and Strategy

With executive support, Comcast consolidated approximately 900 internal supply chain employees and more than 3,000 contractors into a unified structure. The company did not add new headcount but instead focused on upskilling and reorganizing existing teams. “We didn’t grow headcount,” Sam said. “We used the people that we acquired from fourteen different regions and three different divisions… and we reduced inventory and spend by hundreds of millions of dollars.”

The transformation leveraged o9 Solutions as the core planning platform and covered three main business areas:

• Xfinity Mobile
• Network construction materials
• Consumer premises equipment (CPE)

Comcast implemented:

• Demand Planning, including machine learning-based forecasting with 87% accuracy in the mobile business
• Purchasing & Replenishment to improve availability and reduce working capital
• Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) to align finance, operations, and commercial teams
• Collaborative Planning, Forecasting & Replenishment (CPFR) to shift vendor collaboration from reactive to proactive

Prioritizing by Need, Not by Sequence

Rather than a standard sequential rollout, Comcast prioritized implementation based on business urgency; what Sam called the “burning platform.”

In Xfinity Mobile, the team began with demand planning but paused the broader rollout when user requests became overly customized and misaligned with best practices. “We said, we’re going to go look at all the user stories, understand what they’re asking for and why… before we spend another penny.”

After refining the scope, Comcast implemented purchasing and replenishment, resulting in greater planner productivity and more proactive decision-making. “That same time last year they were trying to figure out if they were going to send one phone or four to a store,” Sam said. “Now they’re talking about assortment strategy and improving velocity.”

In construction materials, implementation began with purchasing to resolve delays in field projects. Positive results led to expanding demand and replenishment planning. For CPE, the team began with replenishment based on specific operational needs. “If we had gone the classical approach with all three implementations, I think we’d still be going and we’d be wondering where the value was,” Sam added.

The Role of the Planning Center of Excellence

A critical component of the rollout was the launch of a Planning Center of Excellence (CoE) to lead process design, tool configuration, and user training. “The intent of that is to drive process, tools, and people education in order to deliver and modernize our planning,” Sam said.

The CoE supported implementation through close collaboration with end users. CoE leads were physically embedded with business teams to enable rapid feedback and problem-solving. “Our CoE lead for our Xfinity Mobile business literally sits next to all of the planners,” she explained. “They solve problems together… ‘how would you build it, what would it look like, how long would it take?’”

The CoE also built internal technical capabilities, reducing dependence on external consultants and enabling faster updates and configurations as business needs evolved.

Tangible Business Value

According to Sam, the transformation has produced measurable business impact across multiple areas:

Xfinity Mobile:

• 5% reduction in inventory
• 8% improvement in in-stock rates at 600+ stores
• Shift to machine learning-based forecasting with 87% accuracy
• Greater planner efficiency and focus on strategic decisions

Planners are now shifting from reactive to proactive work. “I have hours back in my day to work proactively,” one team member told Sam. As Sam described, this freed-up capacity enables planners to focus on “smart assortment decisions” and “improving velocity in stores” instead of simply deciding “whether to send one phone or four.”

Construction Materials:

• Nine-digit reduction in spend and inventory
• 17% improvement in inventory health
• 10-point improvement in internal on-time service
• 18-day reduction in inventory aging

“We want to take inventory and spend out, and we want to improve our customer reliability. And we’re doing both,” Sam said, highlighting the balance Comcast achieved between cost control and service quality.

The business results also created a groundswell of executive support. “Our CFO was asking, ‘How do we go faster? What do you need?’” Sam recalled, referring to the shift from internal push to executive pull that helped sustain transformation momentum.

Internally, employee engagement skyrocketed. “Over the last three years, we’ve more than tripled our engagement scores,” Sam said. “That’s due to the engagement the team has from getting time back to work proactively and solve problems.”

She attributed this to a culture shift built on empowering planners with the right tools, processes, and support: “We didn’t grow headcount. We didn’t turn over the team… and we delivered value with the same team we have today.”

Lessons Learned

Sam closed her presentation with three practical lessons from the journey:

• Start where the pain is: Tackling urgent business needs created early wins and buy-in.
• Implement in phases: Quarterly rollouts allowed for faster iteration and stronger user adoption.
• Stay focused on value: Rather than starting with feature checklists, Comcast asked users to describe their problems and then shaped the solution around impact and feasibility.

“We ask users to tell us their problems, not how they want to solve them,” Sam said. “Then, every quarter, we decide what to build based on impact, effort, and value.”

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