o9 Solutions To Help Marks & Spencer Digitise Clothing, Home Planning Systems

Software platform provider o9 Solutions Inc. said it will support Marks and Spencer Plc.’s clothing and home business in the digitisation of its end-to-end planning systems, as the retailer looks to evolve for sustainable growth and value creation.

o9’s artificial intelligence-enabled digital brain platform will replace M&S’ existing systems across merchandise planning, sales stock and intake, and range planning, integrating them into a single platform. M&S’ forecasting and replenishment systems will also be replaced and integrated onto the platform, the company said.  

“We are investing to modernise and upgrade our systems, so we can create greater visibility and collaboration between teams and suppliers, improve planning and availability and enable us to be more tailored and localised with our ranging," said Richard Price, managing director of clothing and home at M&S.

“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,” Price added.

o9’s platform will help integrate retail planning capabilities across departments onto a single data model, enabled by its Enterprise Knowledge Graph technology. o9 said that the platform will help manage merchandise financial planning, assortment planning and downstream planning processes, such as forecasting, allocation, replenishment, promotion and markdown optimisation and will also cover supplier collaboration, including capacity and material planning and purchase orders.

“We have a unique opportunity to help an iconic brand jump into the future with our next-generation platform, as it reshapes for growth,” said Chakri Gottemukkala, co-founder and chief executive officer of o9 Solutions.