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January 15, 2024
2 read min
DALLAS, Jan. 15, 2024 – o9 Solutions, a leading software platform provider for integrated planning and decision-making, has announced that it will be supporting M&S’ Clothing & Home business in the digital transformation of its end-to-end planning systems as the retailer reshapes for sustainable growth and value creation.
o9’s AI-powered platform - Digital Brain - will replace and modernize M&S’ existing systems across merchandise planning, sales stock & intake, and range planning – bringing them together into a singular integrated platform. Phase two of the program will see M&S’ current forecasting and replenishment systems also replaced and integrated onto the platform.
The roll-out of the platform over the next three years will enable Marks & Spencer’ Clothing & Home business to become more agile, joined-up and better able to respond to customer needs and emerging trends.
o9’s Digital Brain platform was selected due to its ability to integrate all key retail planning capabilities across departments onto a single, flexible, and extensible data model powered by o9’s proprietary technology, the Enterprise Knowledge Graph.
From Merchandise Financial Planning and Assortment Planning down to downstream planning processes like Forecasting, Allocation, Replenishment, Promotion and Markdown Optimization and including Supplier Collaboration (capacity and material planning and purchase orders) will all be managed through the platform.
Richard Price, Managing Director of Clothing & Home at M&S, said, “As we reshape for growth, we are investing to modernise and upgrade our systems so we can create greater visibility and collaboration between teams and suppliers, improve planning & availability and enable us to be more tailored and localised with our ranging. By having an end-to-end planning platform, we will be able to better use data and AI to inform decision making and future planning so we can continue to be more relevant, more often to our customers.”
Chakri Gottemukkala, Co-Founder and CEO of o9 Solutions, said, “We are thrilled to be partnering with M&S on such a transformational project for the company. We have a unique opportunity to help an iconic brand jump into the future with our next-generation platform as it reshapes for growth.”
Marks & Spencer serves 30 million customers each year and has a heritage of quality, style, innovation, and value for money and was recently voted the UK’s most trusted brand. In FY 2022/23, its Clothing & Home division grew sales 11.5%, with like-for-like sales up 11.2%. Last week the retailer updated the market on its Christmas trading with Clothing & Home sales increasing by 4.8%.
Learn more at www.o9solutions.com.
About the authors
o9
The Digital Brain Platform
o9 Solutions is a leading Enterprise Knowledge and AI-powered platform helping companies build Agile, Adaptive & Autonomous Planning & Execution Models for transforming enterprise decision-making in environments of rising volatility and uncertainty. Whether it is improving forecast accuracy, matching demand and supply and driving collaboration across the multi-tier supply chain to improve resilience at optimal costs and inventory, or optimizing new product and commercial initiatives to drive revenue growth and margins, decision-making processes from long-range to tactical to execution horizon can be made faster and smarter and connected on o9’s Digital Brain Platform.
o9 brings together game-changing technology innovations — such as innovative enterprise knowledge graph modeling, big data analytics, advanced algorithms for forecasting, demand/supply balancing, scenario planning, real time learning, collaboration, generative and agentic AI, easy-to-use interfaces and cloud-based delivery, and innovative management methods — as well as organization, process and change management best practices to transform decision-making speed and intelligence.
